


Burn My Shadow

by invisibledeity



Series: God Complex [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, BDSM, Gun Kink, M/M, PTSD, Rape Recovery, Sadomasochism, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-25 02:25:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14967110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledeity/pseuds/invisibledeity
Summary: Prompto and Gladio are hanging on to the thin threads of whatever they can find in the dark, while they wait for the return of their King. Prompto's still dealing with the fallout of his imprisonment at Ardyn's hands. And there's no magic cure. Not even in a world like Eos.This is a story about endings and lost hope.





	1. Edge of the Future

**Author's Note:**

> This is the one I've wanted to write for a while. It'll get quite dark.

 

Every day in Lestallum was exactly the same. Routines fell into place and Prompto struggled to keep up with his workload without a constant supply of coffee and distractions. It was comfortable. Nothing changed. He’d go to work, run himself into headache and muscle fatigue with engineering equations and heavy lifting, he’d talk shit about shit with Gladio and Iggy and the few friends he’d made at work, and he’d go to sleep at night, accompanied by Ardyn’s shadow and a whole host of bad dreams.

            This was one of those days, however, where the routine fell through. A simple phrase, that was all it took.

            ‘You were on the camera feed. In the Keep.’

            Gladio was three pints in to a good night, and had reached the kind of drunk where merriness was traipsing its way over to melancholy. He wasn’t in a full-on funk yet, but he was starting to run his mouth about things Prompto really wished he wouldn’t. And now the words _Zegnautus Keep_ were running riot in his brain, re-activating old pathways he’d managed to keep suppressed. Gods, how much work that had taken.

            ‘The hell you talking about this now, for?’ Prompto knocked back the rest of his drink and tapped his fingers on the bar top, in time with the music. No way was he letting this ruin his night.

            But — damn, Gladio was looking serious, now. ‘I mean it, Prom. He had you … he had you—’

            ‘I don’t want to know what you saw.’

            Already his stomach was pitching, a ship in a storm, and Gladio’s stupid fucking words were the rogue wave that would tip him. His hands were starting to judder and this was unfair, he was in public, he couldn’t let himself be any more exposed than he already felt.

            ‘I waited two damn years before broaching the topic. I know how it’s affected you. I—’

            ‘More than a couple words at a time outta your mouth? I’m impressed.’

            Gladio glowered.

            ‘Funny, Prompto. Real funny.’

            In the silence that followed, Prompto eyed his drink some more and Gladio, after a while, took the opportunity to wax on about it again.

            ‘I dunno - I just feel like sometimes I need to talk about, y’know…’

            ‘The thing I don’t wanna talk about?’

            The edge in Prompto’s tone went unnoticed.

            ‘All that stuff…’ He paused, eyebrows deepening. ‘It kills me.’

            Something warm and bristling unfurled in Prompto’s chest. He didn’t want to hear this, not from Gladio.

            ‘Gladio. I don’t wanna hear your sob story about how awful it was for you. Leave it.’

            ‘It wasn’t okay. And it’s pretty damn clear you need to talk about it, too.’

            ‘Leave it.’ The half-empty glass met the table with a resounding clang. Barely noticeable amid the club’s music but it was enough. Gladio’s nostrils flared. He was clearly thinking of retorting, but Prompto fixed him with a glare, and didn’t let loose his hold. ‘You done?’

            Gladio sighed, and it was all frustration and no acceptance. No concession. In that instant, Prompto almost wanted him to hit him. Again. He knew what that felt like, he knew it would hurt. And maybe, it would be enough to calm the fury in his bones, just maybe. But what Gladio did instead was far worse.

            ‘You don’t need to act so emotionless, you know.’

            ‘So emotionless, huh? Like a goddamn…’ Prompto left the sentence hanging and stood up. Left his drink unfinished and walked out the club.

 

Outside, in the cool air, Prompto huffed and paced, but he didn’t get far. It was too depressing to just go home, now, and have that damn sour conversation stuck in his head.

            _Oh, hey, yeah, let’s talk about that time I was kidnapped and imprisoned because you’re drunk and sad and why the fuck not?_

What a great idea, Gladio. Not.

            He paced some more. Looked up at the stars only to remember he couldn’t see them under the oppressive starscourge clouds. Nights like this, it felt like Ardyn was bearing down on him from every angle and _fuck_ , how the hell was he meant to move past it?

            He’d had enough time, right?

            Two years, wasn’t that enough? Well, if it wasn’t enough for someone like Gladio, what hope did he have?

            _Why the fuck am I alive?_

Always no rhyme or reason. It just was, and he just had to live with it as best as he could. Although, what, really, was stopping him from sorting out the issue? One quick shot, finish what Ardyn started, because screw the bastard’s ‘one day we shall both get our wish’ bullshit.

            _Pathetic._

            He shrugged off the shadow clustering at his back, and found himself pacing back toward the club.

            His blood was burning.

            Somewhere in the back of his head was the imperative, on repeat, telling him — no, instructing him — to get the frustration out, to get it over with, to release it. Any way that worked.

            He went back to the bar. Ordered another drink. Didn’t even look at the corner where Gladio had been sitting, although he was aware the big guy had left. Damn, they both got into a strop just like spoiled kids, didn’t they? Made him hate the both of them all the more.

            No space to rage — just shut up and drink.

            And, all was going much more smoothly this time round and the burning in his veins was starting to settle with the addition of yet more alcohol when the hairs on his arms bristled and he was aware of someone in close proximity.

            Oh. Just somebody moving in to occupy the bar stool beside his, catching the spot during a lull in the music. There was no real hint of danger and his gut instinct was always spot on these days, but all the same, he wheeled round, caught off-guard. One hand coming up to block an arm that wasn’t even moving in his direction.

            Somehow, the guy didn’t even notice the start he gave him. Put it down to the atmosphere in the club, the darkness and the noise and the activity.

            Prompto un-tensed his shoulders, and stole a sly glance.

            The guy who had taken the opportunity to sit down next to him was young — probably only a few years older than him — but grizzled and unshaven and sporting a lackadaisical flick to his hair. Any longer and that shaggy mane would have reached his shoulders and maybe fray a little and then, then they would be talking. Prompto was aware he was eyeing the man up as a target for his frustrations and yeah, it was because he looked like _him_ and yeah, that was fine.

            The newcomer had evidently noticed something was not quite all right in Prompto’s world, because he nudged him amicably as he held his unfinished drink up in a symbol of solidarity.

            ‘Thinking about a girl?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘A guy?’

            He stared. The man smiled.

            ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’

            Prompto said nothing, but returned to his drink, focussing hard, too hard, on the bar in front of him. A few swigs later and the guy came out with, ‘Best forget ‘im, mate.’

            ‘Easy for you to say.’ The reply slipped out before he could stop it, and he nearly cursed aloud. It was never a good idea to reveal too much to strangers, and gods, how much that had changed in the past two years. How the hell did he ever used to be so carefree?

            The man just smiled in response. Not in a judgemental sort of way, but more like he got it. Like he’d been there. And, looking at him like that, he was actually quite attractive. Frustration gave way to a stirring sensation below the belt, and Prompto shifted imperceptibly on the stool.

            ‘Your friend left, by the way,’ his new friend quipped.

            ‘You were watching us?’

            ‘Yeah. My mates wanted the window seats. Someone sniped us to ‘em, though.’

            Prompto glanced over. The corner he and Gladio had been sitting in was now occupied by a group of well-dressed young men, laughing and spilling beer as they talked.

            The guy nudged him. ‘You guys have an argument?’

            ‘Can you stop fucking asking?’ Prompto let his frustration seep out, and that was fine; this guy could think Gladio was the one he was thinking about for all he cared. It’d make things less complicated, anyway.

            He was grateful that the guy dropped that particular conversation.

            ‘The hell you drinkin’, anyways?’ He peered at Prompto’s glass, watching the thick, near-black liquid bubble. He looked so morbidly curious, Prompto couldn’t help but grin.

            ‘Sambuca and coke.’

            ‘Yeesh, stuff of the devil. You can stomach that?’

            _I can stomach just about anything._

            He didn’t say that aloud. Instead, he said, ‘Yeah, sure. Stuff’s real sweet.’

            If anything, that was an understatement: it was so saccharine it made him sick. But there was something about the overwhelming liquorice flavour that gave him a perverse satisfaction. Perfect, for when he felt like this. To challenge himself, to take pleasure in the ordeal of drinking it.

            ‘Heh, right. Well, I’ll leave that to you.’ The guy took another swig of his own drink; what looked like a gin and tonic. And he kept up the conversation; idle, nonsense chatter, and a cute attempt at distracting Prompto from what he thought was a domestic dispute.

 

Some time later, Prompto found himself on the dancefloor, and some time after that, he found himself in one of the secluded alcoves of the club, feeling up the guy in the half-shadow while the drumbeat throbbed in his bones.

            He hadn’t asked the guy’s name, but he didn’t need names.

            ‘We should get outta here.’

            His new friend nodded fervently, thirsty eyes drinking him in, and they kissed ferociously before breaking off and heading for the door.

 

Back to the guy’s apartment, across the other side of Lestallum. Prompto wasn’t even remotely worried — just horny, and frustrated, and ready to whip the gun out of the Armiger at a moment’s notice if anything went beyond what he desired. He had not felt so reckless and yet so in control in a long time.

            Into the apartment and heading straight for the bedroom, and Prompto span himself into the man’s embrace, back first, pressing his ass into the man’s groin and gyrating, teasing him forward, a clear indication that he wanted to receive.

            When he felt hardness tenting against the small of his back, he smiled, and pulled the man’s arms around his own neck, where he could plant eager kisses on the soft underside of the forearm.

            It was only when the man finally started tugging his pants off that he realised why it wasn’t getting him as hard as he’d hoped. His partner could sense it, and at first he tried kissing him more, giving him more urgent attentions, but that didn’t have much effect. They shared an awkward look, then Prompto said, ‘It would be better if you … hit me a little.’

            The guy stared at him for a moment that stretched out far too long.

            ‘C’mon, man, do it.’

            The moment before the leap was agonising, but then the man’s expression crossed over into determination. Okay, then. _Pull out all the stops, come on, I’m ready._

            ‘Tough cookie, are we?’ A coy smile played upon his lips. ‘With the way you’re dressed, shoulda figured you’d be a slut for pain.’

            Prompto merely smirked and moved in closer, exposing his neck, a picture of submission. His partner seemed to be psyching himself up, then with a glint in his eye he moved.

            ‘All right, I can play this game.’

            Prompto let the man shove him against the wall, too fast and too hard, and for an awful moment his heart leapt into his mouth and it was too real and there was stubble at his cheek and then kisses and the hands that gripped his wrists were just a little too hard but still, it wasn’t hard _enough._ Damn bastard was holding back.

            He raised an eyebrow, stared in challenge. ‘You scared of hurting me?’

            _That’s it, come on, be a brat, you’ll get what you want that way._

The man hit him then; a hard slap across the side of his face, and he recovered instantly, eyes ablaze, and said ‘Chicken shit.’

            The next slap was better.

            Gods, his nerves felt alive. He’d needed this, since the last lightning flask had run out, and fuck, it stung in all the right ways.

            His new friend didn’t seem so interested in keeping up with the damage-dealing once his erection was in full swing, however. He became more handsy and soft, despite Prompto’s constant pushing for violence, and soon it didn’t matter anyway, because he was teasing Prompto into hardness, alternating between fondling his balls and grabbing his ass.          

            Prompto eventually tired of the foreplay and pulled him onto the bed, atop him, forcing the man to pin him down, moving his hands to encircle his own wrists, then changing his mind and moving his hands down to his belt. Urging him to rip his jeans open, and eventually the guy did, and then did the same to himself, until they were both naked and dry-humping each other on the mattress.

            Of course this dude was prepared, of course he had lube. Prompto grabbed the bottle and, with no need for suggestion, he spread it liberally, stretching himself with one hand while working the man’s cock with the other, pulling back the delicate foreskin and positioning the tip against his asshole.

            But his partner retreated, abruptly.

            ‘I ain’t fucking you without a condom.’

            ‘Whatever.’ Prompto grimaced, saved himself from all but rolling his eyes as he watched the guy fish in the dresser for a packet. Yeah, that was sensible, but… when had he ever cared before? Right now it was just one more distraction, and — ah, screw it.

            He waited. Then his partner lubed himself up some more, and edged his way in, and — there, those delicate nerves shivering into life again. The pressure increasing as his cock took up space inside him until he felt utterly filled, to the point of pain, and he held his legs up higher to give the guy a better angle. Then his partner began to thrust, unsteadily at first then more rhythmically, and Prompto used the inertia to pull him closer on the upthrust, to drive him deeper inside until he felt impaled. As the motion increased, as they both began to sweat, and pant, and deliver breathless kisses to one another, Prompto tried to manipulate the man’s hands, make him _grab_ , make him _hit._

            It didn’t exactly work, and the man soon reached completion, before finishing Prompto off by sucking his cock. There was this unspoken awkwardness around the fact that he hadn’t managed to make Prompto come by penetration alone, although Prompto knew damn well why that was, and it was nothing to do with the guy not being a good enough fuck.

            And they collapsed into sleep alongside each other, comfortably enough, although there was a small seed of discomfort settling deep in Prompto’s belly as he thought of the failed attempts at sadism.

Goading people on… Just like _him._

Fuck that.

 

The sound of air being sucked in between teeth brought him out of hazy dreams. Beside him, a terribly familiar sigh. Instantly, every nerve in his body shivered into life and the frisson danced from his head down to his toes and when he turned his head on the soft pillow, amber eyes stared back at him. The expression was stern, so stern, and so kind. Care beneath those hard-lined eyebrows, and authority in the creases that lined those cheeks. Too old, too decaying, and just like that, he was back in the nightmare, never mind the soft, soft sheets.

            Ardyn smiled, showing teeth.

            ‘Two years, Prompto. Now that’s an awfully long time to leave me hanging. But it was worth the wait.’

            He stared, shell-shocked.

            ‘The fuck?’

            Then the man beside him stirred properly, and his face was fine — no wrinkles, no red hair, no trace of the devil — and he looked at Prompto with genuine confusion on his face.

            ‘You all right?’

            Another vision. _Fuck._ It had been a while. Why?

            Blame Gladio. Blame Gladio for bringing it up.

Prompto scrambled upright. The alcohol was still deep in his system, and he felt light-headed and still far too out of it, and that face being so close and so present in his mind did not help. So he did what he could to get control — he fixed up the covers, found his boxers, his vest, his jeans from the mess on the floor. Tried to dress as casually as possible, so the guy wouldn’t ask any more questions.

            ‘Yeah. ‘M fine.’

            ‘Want breakfast?’

            The very thought made his stomach contract. _Yeah, sure, let’s sit down together for a plate of eggs and toast. Give me more of a chance to think about how hard we fucked and how little you actually hurt me in the end. Give me more of a chance to regret everything. Or worse: a space to pretend how nice and cosy and good everything isn’t._

            How about no.

            He shook his head, muttered a brief ‘Nah’, then continued getting dressed.

            Then he looked at the time. Four in the goddamn morning. Always so hard to tell, these days, with the ever-present darkness. But, damn — this was just depressing. His fuckbuddy evidently hadn’t realised, either, but whatever. He soon would.

            Prompto shrugged on his boots and didn’t bother zipping them up as he went for the door. ‘Thanks for the fuck.’

            ‘Yeah, see you round sometime-’

            But Prompto had gone.

 

By the time he was in the apartment lobby, he was already slipping over into that sub-reality he was now so familiar with; part dream and part waking-world. He was unsteady. Hard-wired and horribly alive.

            He walked outside on autopilot, barely sensing the movement of his feet. He was slipping, and shit, it was happening too easily, it was too unstoppable. He wanted so badly to rest but there was something so urgent that needed doing.

            In front of his eyes, where the lobby had been, there was only the blue-black corridor of the Magitek facility, shimmering before his eyes as if underwater, dredging up all the stale benthos from the bottom of the deep along with it.

            He didn’t want to be seeing it. But he couldn’t stop it. If there was a way to control the vision, he hadn’t been made privy to it.

            There was nobody else outside at this time of night. Beyond the veil of sterile hallways, the perfectly ordinary Lestallum streets shone, uplit from yellow lamps and so dingy in comparison to the world that lay emplaced before it. Quiet. Empty.

            Prompto called on the Armiger — amazing, really, how that still worked these days, although it took a fair few tries — and once he’d retrieved his gun, he slotted it into his belt and thumbed the trigger guard. Safer, in this case, to keep it out of the Armiger, where nobody could manipulate it, turn it against him.

            _I won’t get caught out again._

Copper coated the back of his throat, the taste coming on sudden as a flash of rain. He rolled his tongue around, smacked his lips in discomfort. Not metal, no, just the aftertaste of last night’s Sambuca.

            A rogue Magitek Trooper appeared down the hall, scurrying toward him in the clinical blue light. He took aim and fired, just enough to shock the thing — for he never could quite stomach killing them any more since he _knew_ — and the shot ricocheted off a swinging shop sign, and a frightened drunkard ran off back down the street he had come from, yelling incoherently.

            If Prompto had been thinking, _really_ thinking about the gravity of the situation, he might have been surprised at how little he cared. But he wasn’t thinking. All he wanted was out, out of Lestallum, out of the facility, out of the damn cloying tar in his head.

            He was sick of running away from the man behind the machine. He had entertained the thought, such a simple, clean thought, of finding him, of making him pay. And maybe now it was time.

            He walked on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-----  
> Always wear a condom, folks  
> \-----


	2. My Dreams All Fade Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunken plans never fall into place as intended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life caught up with me, and I feel bad for leaving Prompto hanging like this (arf arf)  
> But I'm back. And the story continues.

 

Outside the gates of Lestallum, a shadow shifted in the dark. It was low, and it hid in the trees, the bushes, the small foliage where it could rustle and scuffle and stir. Prompto had not gone far out of the gates when he heard it, his attention snapping rapt to the undergrowth that lined that main road out of the city. He stopped, curious, barely scared for the adrenaline still thumping in his veins. Everything else around him had been a blur as he walked out of the town, dissociating like crazy, but this, this had him wired and attentive and utterly ready to react. Funny, how the mind split apart like that.

            Another small scuffle, and a squelching sound like mud shifting. Prompto crouched. Listened. Waited. Then, he extended a hand, and said, ‘I know you.’

            Two yellowed points of light flickered amid the shrubs, growing wider, stronger. The creature blinked, and came forth.

            Prompto almost regretted putting his hand out — it was so tempting to retract, because he was still scared of the creature, and that sea-salt nausea in his stomach was growing with the proximity — but he held steady.

            The nøkk’s limbs cracked and rustled and squelched as it came out of the undergrowth to croon around his hand. Greeting him like an old friend; he supposed that’s what they were, by now. _Friends with a daemon, who would have thought?_

            He looked at it and it looked at him, and he _knew_ why it was there. In perfect unison, the pair of them looked to the east, to the shadow of the fallen City, and Prompto felt heart-thuddingly certain of what he was to do. It all made sense, in that barely-conscious, dreamlike way. He could not imagine there being any other ending to this.

            ‘Lead me,’ he said, and the nøkk, with all its awkward lack of grace, reached out a stilted arm and led him through the murk.

            A few more hours and it would be dawn. Or, what passed for dawn now. The edges of the horizon had that muddy umber hue to them; the starscourge miasma, thick in the air, blocking the light that should be. Something surged in Prompto’s chest and he felt a _need_ to go faster. He was unsure why — as if shedding light on his surroundings would make all his truths too unbearable to look at.

            So he was surprised, then, when it was darker than usual around him, and — slatted points of light? No, not light, but that umber glow again. Clouds. Miasma. He was indoors looking out, and that made no sense, he had just walked out of the city, how could he be indoors —

            Something brittle and blocky on the ground made him stumble. Then he realised. He was in the tunnel, on the way out of Lestallum. The slatted points of light: the gaps in the tunnel wall overlooking the gorge. The thing blocking his foot: a splintered spiracorn horn. They had encountered so many spiracorns in these tunnels, in the past two years. Poor creatures were probably only looking for a refuge from the darkness, much like the humans, but the Glaives had put down every single one of them that had tried to breach the tunnel.

            Best not to think about that. It was too cruel.

            Curious, dazed, and seeking a reprieve from feeling so on-edge, he stumbled around the strewn horns and laid a hand on the edge of the wall. Hard, gritted concrete. Familiar. Here, he could feel the rush of wind from the gorge far below. Gods, it was pretty, at least, what he could see of it. Vast and limitless and yawning out before him, so deep, so _deep._

            It almost beckoned.

            A cricking and clacking from behind him. Twigs, in motion. Wet sounds of something rising from mud. It distracted him enough from the edge that the limitless drop of the gorge was no longer a temptation.

            ‘I’m not gonna jump,’ he said, and the nøkk just gave him this look that seemed to reach far too deep inside him. Made him feel self-conscious. Embarrassed, almost. He told himself again in his head, as if that would consolidate the thought. _I wasn’t gonna jump._

            The nøkk pointed a dark tendril to the east.

            _Insomnia_.

            Even if the hills had not been blocking the view, he doubted he would have seen even so much as the building outlines. No lights from the city any more, not these days. But he didn’t need to see it to know that was where it lay. It, and the only person that now inhabited it, if the rumours were true.

            Prompto glanced at his companion, and nodded.

            _I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna get there._

            He couldn’t even see the slats of light in the tunnel wall any more. There was just him, the daemon leading, and the sickly sea of salt and ink around him. Pressing, shifting, forming an endless vortex around his body as he walked and walked and walked.

 

Further down the tunnel and something new interrupted his pilgrimage. Not the gorge, not the bitter wind, not the darkness, but a feeling. It wasn’t anything complex or sophisticated. Just simple, straight-up fear.

            The back of his neck began prickling and every muscle in his body tensed, bones to balls.

_He’s here._

_I can feel him._

            The thought that the daemon’s hand might become Ardyn’s was too terrifying. He clutched tighter, forcing himself to feel the bumps and rises of the daemon’s skin, because rather the daemon than that. Rather the darkness, the grime and the muck than the _so very human_ of _that_.

            Another prickling sensation and now his breath caught. He stopped, and the inertial yank on his shoulder stopped the nøkk from moving too. It chittered away in no more than a mumble. It was as agitated as he was, perhaps, but Prompto didn’t pay attention to its distress, because the fear of the hand and the touch had become too real. His heart thumped hard between the moments where he paused and then retracted his hand.

            It was okay if the daemon changed into Ardyn. The chasm was close enough. He still had time to jump, if he needed to.

            _Don’t be such a wimp. You’re always such a wimp._

_You came out here to put a bullet to his head, don’t forget that._

But then, the low and sonorous rumble he had come to fear and despise took form out of the shadow at his back, and his resolve faltered.

            ‘How long I have waited, dear Prompto.’

            The shiver that spiked through him now was deeper than ever; coursing through old channels like underwater canals long since closed to the world.

            He froze. He couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t think of any words to say. This was — this was worse than he had imagined it would be. He expected the first words to be something of a tease, like when he’d seen him in his apartment — the coffee, the rainy morning. _You may summon your gun._ A tease, a joke, or failing that a stern look. A command, like he was a Magitek Trooper awaiting orders, awaiting the omniscient hand to tell him that his creator knows best. An instruction to step away from the ledge like he had told him to lower the gun from his own head. Something, _anything_ derogatory.

            But no, all he got was a lovesick call. _How long I have waited._ It flayed him wide open, because after all they had been through he could not understand it.

            _How can you care,_ he wanted to say. But still, no words would come. His throat, dry as he heaved in ragged gasps of air.

_Are you not going to shoot?_

_I thought you said you were going to make him pay?_

The voice in the back of his head moved to the fore, goading him on as he stood before the devil himself.

            _I was gonna,_ he thought. _I was gonna, but…_

He couldn’t fucking breathe.

            Control, that was what he needed. He took his time, tried to control his breathing, tried to let himself move through the panoply of emotions whipping up a storm inside him. That doctor he’d seen in Lestallum, she’d said… she’d said to let the emotions be _felt._ To list them, if it helped.

            Sometimes it did, so he tried to do just that, although his blood was burning like it would set itself on fire.

            Come on, _focus._

            Fear, first and foremost. Okay, good, that was a start. He was scared. Nothing wrong in realising that.

            Anger, too, beneath that. Okay, okay, whatever — _come on, be like Iggy, let yourself accept you’re angry, just this once —_ okay he was angry. Furious, in fact. The sensation rose like a storm surge, inundating his body. Overwhelming; how that reminded him of something…

            And then, inexplicably, he felt horny. Perhaps it was the way Ardyn, even covered in shadow as he was, still seemed to possess that _promise_ of some dark and filthy payoff.

            He shoved that uncomfortable feeling far down into some recess of his mind.

            It was just a trained response.

            _Fuck._

The alcohol from earlier was still so strong in his system that he retched on the ground. He drew up nothing but bile, though, and to the side he heard the nøkk chitter, while Ardyn sighed softly.

            Always, ever, so softly.

            ‘I can’t—’ he started to say, but he wasn’t even sure the words were leaving his mouth correctly. Everything was fuzzy as cotton wool and jumbled up.

            Ardyn merely stood, and watched, and waited.

            That was worse than anything. Was he upset? Was he mad? Was he disapproving? Or amused? So hard to tell, so hard, in the darkness.

            Again, Prompto focussed on pushing down the uncomfortable burning in his gut — now a mixture of arousal and unpurged bile — and in the time it took him to focus, the world managed to shift.

            His ears, popping as if coming down from high elevation, and that was weird.

            Had he jumped into the gorge?

            ‘Prompto? Is that you? Prompto!’

            A voice he recognised, in the dark. Not Ardyn.

            ‘Ignis?’

            He tried to move forward, and found himself on solid ground. The clinking sound of something like bone — the spiracorn horn. Okay, he was still in the tunnel.

            There was another voice too, one he didn’t know. Much huskier. ‘You okay, kid?’ is all this voice said, and Prompto peered into the darkness, trying to make sense of the shape. A hunter? No, a glaive. Or, at least, some guy with the Kingsglaive slacks on and a standard-issue crossbow tucked away at his side. Gruff as it was, his voice seemed to hide little menace behind it. Not that Prompto would have minded — there were bigger problems.

            ‘He’s _here,_ Iggy.’

            ‘He?’ 

            ‘Ardyn.’

            A sigh from Ignis — he was clearly about to tell him how silly that was, wasn’t he? In a normal situation, Prompto would be running all the possible responses through his mind, fretting over which was the least likely to get him chastised for being so stupid as to _think_ Ardyn was really here. But this was not a normal situation. And, as it stood, Prompto didn’t care what Ignis thought. The shadow was at his back and it was pulling him, urging him, further down the tunnel and if it realised Ignis was going to drag him away it might—

            Ignis stepped forward, his cane loud as a firecracker on the asphalt.

            ‘Shhh!’

            ‘There’s no-one else here.’ The glaive that was with them, interjecting as if that would help. And then Iggy, joining in.

            ‘I don’t sense him, Prompto.’

            ‘Ugh! No, I don’t mean like that. You can’t notice him, you can’t notice him, but—’

            ‘Prompto—’

            ‘He’s right there!’

            ‘Prompto, you need to come back with me now, okay? It’s not far to the town, and I’d really like to make you a cup of tea. Please.’

            Prompto watched Ignis; how careful he was not to breach the space between them with more than an outstretched hand, how respectful he was being.

            What if that was all a lie?

            Did Ignis hate him for this? Gods, Ignis was so pleasant, so polite, he’d never know. What if there was a tipping point to Ignis’s demeanour that he was about to discover — a few moments too much and then Ignis would lose his patience, and the gods only knew how skilled the man was in a fight, blindness or no.

            Suddenly his insides were awash in fear.

            ‘I wasn’t trying to… to hurt you.’

            ‘I know. It’s okay.’

            Was it?

            Prompto edged forward, reluctant to be too bold, watching Ignis’s body language the whole time. Ignis heard him; by the twitch in his face, he knew he was close. But he made no move to touch Prompto.

            And, piece by piece, he felt Ardyn’s presence diminishing. A fog lifted from his mind, and all of a sudden the fabric on Ignis’s jacket was detailed and grainy, and the tunnel walls seemed sharp and in focus.

            Ignis asked him if he was okay, and his voice sounded less muffled than it had done seconds ago. Prompto became aware, with that horrible clarity that sometimes accompanied grand psychosis, that Ignis was fully aware of what was happening to him, and that it would take a lot — an awful lot — to get Ignis not to worry. And, he had to get Ignis off his back, because if he didn’t, how else would he eventually make it to Insomnia?

            He had to say something.

_Everything is fine?_

He couldn’t say that; nobody would believe him.

            So what, then? He struggled with his thoughts for a while longer, then fell silent.

            ‘One of the watchmen saw you heading outside the gates,’ Ignis offered. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

            For a moment, Prompto feared Ignis would ask him what he was doing out here, but he refrained. Instead, he asked again if Prompto was okay.

            ‘Please — anything that’s the matter, know that you can tell me.’

            ‘I…’

            And he gave up, because there was nothing to say. Ignis already refused to realise that Ardyn was _right there._ He tried to hide the embarrassing sniffle that escaped his nose, but to no avail, and it seemed this was the trigger Ignis needed.

            The hug came out of nowhere, and was made of care and desperation, and Prompto recognised this as much as he was taken aback by it. At first he yelped, but when he realised what was happening he just accepted Ignis’s embrace limply, trying not to choke up.

            ‘Let’s get you back. Come on.’ Ignis broke off the embrace, and offered an arm, which Prompto took without thinking. Stick clattering on the ground, he began to escort Prompto back to the safe, golden glow of Lestallum. The Glaive that accompanied them tracked on ahead, checking for roadblocks and danger, staying mercifully out of Prompto’s personal space.

            The nøkk slipped into shadow, and Prompto did not think about it again until much later.

 

Ignis made him the tea, and it was a mediocre affair, because Ignis still insisted on doing everything himself — a feeling Prompto understood well, because how _nice_ it was to be in control. But his moves were slow, even after two years of near-total blindness, and the tea suffered as a result. Once Prompto had drunk his fill of the weak, yet warming brew, Ignis took him back to his apartment and — yes, one more check that Prompto had everything he needed.

            He wasn’t even aware if there was food in the cupboard but he lied and said there was.

            ‘Call me if you need anything,’ Ignis had urged. And Prompto had said yes, of course, and thank you, thank you, thank you, as many times as seemed necessary for the kindness he was being afforded.

            Before Ignis left proper, he had put a hand carefully on Prompto’s shoulder and said, ‘Just remember. If you’re hurting, you should tell people how you feel. We’re here for you. We’ll listen.’

            Now he was alone, with a number to dial by the phone and a sickly hangover-buzz in his head and in his veins.  

            He paced, at first. Considered making coffee, decided against it for the fact the beans were running low. Couldn’t do anything by the half-measure now, it had to be black as sin or nothing. The tea from Ignis had been comforting but it wasn’t strong enough.

            The things that _were_ strong enough: Ardyn, daemons, a good fuck from a faceless stranger. Things that mashed into an ungodly singularity in his mind until he was both wishing they were gone and wishing they would be _harder._

The heat in his groin rose and fell.

 _Ardyn, I’m sorry,_ he mouthed to the air, hoping that he, or maybe the nøkk would answer, but he was met with silence. Perhaps they thought he had deserted them, after walking back to the city with Ignis. Perhaps he could offer a piece of himself again, to make it better — would that please them? Would that get him down from the cross?

            _You’re not on the damn thing any more,_ some angry part of his mind piped up. _You’re just searching for any excuse to make yourself feel less guilty about getting your rocks off to some stranger last night._

Wait, of course he wasn’t — that had been years ago. And the sex… it was second-rate anyway. Nothing to feel guilty about.

_Maybe you miss it. With Ardyn._

Fuck — no.

            He felt hollow. There was a big old gaping wound in his chest, as though the bullet had pierced him again and let something out, something weighty and precious. He tried to place the feeling, to articulate it more than just a gap of nothingness, but the words escaped him.

            Pacing, again and again. Back and forth, watching precious seconds tick by on the wall clock with blissful regularity. And then he realised what it was: he felt disgusting, no— disgust _ed_ , by his own thoughts. Knowing they were subconscious did nothing to make him feel any better, because what if that meant he really did want it? However secretly, however reluctantly.

            In that moment, he had never hated himself more.

            He stopped by the sink, gripped the edge, leaned over just slightly.

            _Oh god, I do not feel good._

            Used-up coffee cups piled by the sink, long-dried dribbles staining the sides like grotesque fingers tripping over each other, reaching for the base of the cup.

_If you’re hurting, you should tell people how you feel._

            Why?

            What difference would it make? Everyone was hurting; what good would a circle-jerk do?

            He slumped against the countertop instead of giving in to the urge to puke. Somehow, the hard vinyl felt so incredibly soft. Damn, he was tired. He was tired, and weak, and hung over, so that when the roaring in his head started up fresh, he was entirely unprepared to weather it.

 

When Prompto regained some sense of self-awareness, he found himself in the kitchen, crouched on the floor, hands clapped against the sides of his head. His index finger hurt where a hair from his head tangled around it — he pulled it free, and saw the end of the nail was tugged, splintered, exacerbated. He had been biting, again.

            Something loud — but coming from outside his head this time — interrupted his thoughts.

            Knocking, at the door.

            In his half-asleep, sluggish, dissociative state, he thought somebody was breaking in. He roused himself, muscles trembling with fear and adrenaline, until he realised it was just somebody knocking, albeit urgently, at the door.

            _Lionheart… where are you?_

He grabbed his gun and edged towards the door.

            What he found when he eked it open was Gladio, braced against the doorframe with his big, strong hands. His eyebrows were narrowed and his expression was intense. ‘I’m sorry,’ were the first words out of his mouth.

            ‘You…’ Prompto didn’t get it. Somehow, the last thing he expected was an apology. Gladio’s face was so intense, so upset, and slowly, it began to come back to him: the bar, the conversation, the drinking, and the—

            ‘It’s all my fault,’ Gladio said, lungs heaving in breath around his words. He must have run pretty hard to get here. ‘Don’t tell me it’s not — and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— ah, fuck, Prom. Please.’

            Prompto studied the uncomfortable amber of Gladio’s eyes and decided that yes, this really was him. No sly, wry turn of the mouth, no glinting expression. Not Ardyn — he wouldn’t be able to help himself if he’d cornered him like this. No, this was only Gladio. If nothing else, it was clear from the awkward way the big guy was trying to tackle _emotion._ Prompto slowly placed his gun on the hallway table.

            ‘Huh?’

            Shit. Gladio had seen the weapon.

            ‘Um. Just in case. Y’know. Sorry.’

            His heart thudded a painful double-beat that almost had him grasping at his chest, because _what if Gladio took offence to this?_

            But Gladio didn’t say anything. He looked horribly sad, though, and somehow that was worse.

            The seconds between them dragged out and Prompto wondered what to say, what to say, who would speak first, how would it escalate—

            Then Gladio exhaled slowly, and rubbed the back of neck in a way that seemed far too demure for someone of his size.

            ‘Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say,’ Gladio supplied, and Prompto finally placed the emotion.

_He was worried for me. He was worried, and he felt guilty._

And then, as naturally as ice melting to water, the conclusion: _You made him feel guilty._

_Don’t say it, don’t you dare say it, you’ll ruin everything._

_Much as you think it’s true._

He managed to keep his mouth shut. Gladio continued.

            ‘So, um. I promise I’ll cool it next time. Maybe we can train together. Um, yeah, so…’ Gladio trailed off. They could both sense the conversation — if it could even really be called a conversation, for all Prompto was taking part — had come to a natural close. ‘Take care. Okay?’ Gladio’s dark amber eyes met his, and they were genuine.

            ‘Okay,’ Prompto said, and he desperately hoped he could keep that promise.

            When the door closed, Prompto let the sound echo for a while, pressing his back against the wall and just breathing.

            After a while, he went over to the window and drew back the curtain a scrap, just enough to see Gladio making his way back to his own digs. He wished he hadn’t, because Gladio had stopped by the fountain, and had both hands on the ledge, and was staring into the water as if that was where the answers lay.

            A long moment passed, then Gladio splashed some water on his bearded face, shook the excess off, and started walking.

            When Gladio was long gone, Prompto returned to the kitchen, and finally looked at the time.

            The morning was halfway through. His head still hurt. He knew he wouldn’t be going in to the power plant that day — that was okay, they could wait until tomorrow. Or the day after, or the day after that. But, what he could do for now, was to start planning, because he had to find a way back to Insomnia or this would never end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me for this. I love you all.


	3. Burn A Seed And Learn To Laugh Aloud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nurture those coping mechanisms, Prompto- but make sure you nurture the right ones, okay?
> 
> Another week of fits and starts. Gladio is trying his best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back on my bullshit *again* after a rocky week. This matter will out, and it must get further before Episode Ardyn comes to greet me with a dangerously welcoming smile.
> 
> Hope you are all well, and thank you for reading, you lovely people.

 

The air smelled of humus and wet grass. Prompto stood, watching in rapt fascination as deft hands worked bulbs into the soil in a rhythmic motion. He had decided, after a week of trying to get back into the rhythm of life in Lestallum after his ill-advised escapade, that he liked spending time at the greenhouses, and Mimi, the horticulturalist, was always happy to oblige his presence. ‘You’re like these plants,’ she had said, the first time they met, and he had looked at them with their scrawny, scraggly stems, poking out of the meagre soil to reach for the light, surviving despite everything, and he had thought, _that’s not such a bad thing._

Because of this, he had felt comfortable enough to keep returning day after day. He had originally just been looking for a distraction, something to stop himself thinking about returning to Insomnia, something to drive away that incessant itch. A happy accident that it had become a habit.

Today, Mimi was planting onion sets — miniature bulbs in their second year of growth. With a bit of luck, she said, they would have fresh onions in the Lestallum kitchens this autumn, and Lord knows they needed it, since the last farms had been abandoned. Watching her fingers press into the earth was as addictive as it was unnerving. There was a memory there somewhere. He watched her finish the fourth row, then the fifth, then he managed to place it.

             ‘I had this dream the other night,’ he began, and Mimi looked up, eyes bright in a dark-fringed face. The implicit _Oh? Continue_ present in her expression. So he did. ‘I was trying to plant some seeds. It was … all these wildflowers. I don’t know where I got them from. They were, like, thin and spindly … in the palm of my hand, like this.’ He cupped his hand to illustrate. Then he realised how tall he seemed, towering over Mimi while she squatted on the ground, and it felt wrong, so he squatted too, face closer to the loamy earth now. ‘But we only had these … these old pots already filled with earth, and we’d planted something in them the year before, but they never grew. So I tried using them to plant the new flowers. I poked holes in the soil, and I tried to pour the seeds in, but the soil started … shifting. Like something was alive. All… moving and… Like some kind of worm or something.’

             He realised he was focussing incredibly hard on the soil Mimi had just tilled, as if expecting motion. In the back of his mind, he knew what should happen: the soil would heave and push up and some half-decayed, pulsing, grub of a thing would squirm out and turn everything rotten, and it was going to happen _any second now._

             The anticipation was killing him. It was killing him and Mimi was waiting so considerately for him to finish, and he felt _sick_ that and all he could do was watch the earth and hope and pray that it wouldn’t be real. Nothing happened.

             ‘It was … bad,’ he finished, and he exhaled deeply. His stomach was in knots.

             She frowned, not at him but rather at the situation.

‘You don’t have to stay and watch if you don’t want to.’

             ‘I wanna see how it’s done,’ he insisted.

             After a moment she smiled. ‘No daemons here,’ she said, as if reading his mind, and she returned to the planting. There was no direct mention of his little escapade outside the city — they had never talked about it — but he was under no illusion that she didn’t know. Word travelled like wildfire in the confines of the town. A former Crownsguard of the King going insane and hallucinating his way out of the protective city gates would make for good gossip. Mimi, however, was not the gossiping type, so if she had heard the news she was going to keep it on the down low. ‘So you gotta make sure they’re not more than five centimetres deep,’ she said. ‘Makes ‘em not struggle so much to get out. Hey — can you pass the nutra-grow?’

             He obliged. The stuff looked like tar in the recycled drink bottle she kept it in, and — _don’t let your stomach turn_ — he looked away just in time. Open the bottle, pop of plastic, tip and spill. A hit of earthy, detrital musk filled his senses. The stuff was strong, full of nitrogen and vitamins and minerals: everything a plant could ever need.

             Mimi was taking care to put only a few precious drops over each buried bulb. Prompto took the initiative, reaching behind for the second bottle of nutra-grow — she kept a fair few back there — and starting on the second row. Drop by precious drop, complete the row, move on to the next. Withstand the heady smell and the thick, slick sludge, feed the soil and the seeds hiding deep within and wait for growth to triumph. Make a tiny, tiny difference somehow.

             It was all he had to hold on to.

 

‘Prompto, you’re late.’

             Gladio, inside the factory entrance, looking out as he was looking in.

             ‘Eh… couldn’t find my stuff.’ Prompto patted his hip holster, where Lionheart lay securely fastened, glinting in the overhead lights. He hadn’t cleaned it as well as he should have — no time, he told himself, after fishing it out last-minute from its cubby hole by the apartment door before leaving — but hopefully Gladio wouldn’t notice the grime. He attempted a half-smile. ‘All sorted now though.’

             ‘Right on.’ Gladio pushed off from the wall, swaggering over, rubbing his hands as if dusting off chalk that didn’t exist.

             Dare he ask the question?

             Might as well.

             ‘So, uh… why we meeting here?’

             ‘I thought we’d do some training inside the factory.’

             Was this Gladio’s way of trying to hint that he should go back to work?

             ‘Hmm … ’kay.’ He stood by as Gladio swung the gate open, and he slipped inside, sprightly and quick-footed and no trouble at all. ‘This a, uh, motivational thing?’

             ‘Not really — I just figured, since it ain’t a delivery day, they’d let us use the loading bay for training. It’s like an assault course in there.’ Prompto nodded. ‘And besides, Ignis was telling me about this yoga thing he’s been doing… haya …’

             ‘Hatha—’

             ‘Yeah, Hatha yoga. With the, uh, heat, and all that. Meant to be good for the circulation. Anyway, his group’s been using the loading bay for that, cos of the warmth, and the space, so I figured I’d ask.’ Gladio rubbed the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his long locks — and gods, that hair was getting so long these days — and Prompto was struck by how soft and sensitive he seemed. Awkward, too, and yeah, that was definitely Prompto’s fault _._

             This was the first round of training they had done since he had returned from his… episode, or whatever-the-fuck it was outside the city. Since he had walked out on Gladio at the bar and kick-started the worst hallucination he’d had in months. He had only knocked on Gladio’s door that very morning to take him up on his offer, and it was still hard to believe that he was standing here right now, about to get into a sparring match with the one person who held enough strength and dominance and — _yes, even that superficial similarity to him, in the eyes and the waves of the hair but fuck, he must never know that._

There was also the small matter of Gladio holding enough of an emotional sway over him from their close months, no, years, of adventuring together that he feared he would become compromised somehow by the experience of sparring again at such close range. Well — _c’mon, let’s be fair now_ — he was already compromised. He didn’t like being put on the back foot.

             But maybe that was exactly why this was a good idea. Make him stronger, give him more _control._

             ‘Here’s your dummy rounds,’ Gladio said, and Prompto accepted the cartridges  —  he had to, else Gladio would have dropped them on the floor — and he set to pocketing half of them and inserting the other half into the barrel of his gun. His moves were rigid, a little unpractised, but he managed it with minimal fumbling. Gladio was already wearing a protective vest, and he handed Prompto a spare as a precaution. This was merely a formality; Gladio would be using his practice sword, the one with no edge to it at all, so it was not as though Prompto would suffer any real injury. Made sense for Gladio to be wearing one, though. Rubber bullets could damage the breastbone if they caught someone square in the chest, and that thought alone — that Prompto was the infinitely more dangerous one in this situation — gave him pause for thought. Uncomfortable, but thrilling, to feel so powerful.

             He accepted the vest, because he refused to accept the higher position. And, re-strapping his gun to his hip holster, he patted himself down and gave the okay.

             He still didn’t know why he had said yes to Gladio. Perhaps he had simply felt too guilty.

             Enough of that. Gladio wanted to help, and he couldn’t kick a gift horse in the mouth a second time just because he hadn’t liked the delivery of the first. And besides, the more he trained, the more likely it was that they’d allow him out on a hunting mission in future. And then, absconding to Insomnia would be a lot easier. _Endgame, Prompto, keep it in mind._ He followed Gladio inside, watching his silhouette turn blue- then red- then orange-tinged with the crystal and factory lights.

 

Training was tough. He had known it would be, but that alone had not quite prepared him for the muscle ache and the sheer effort of putting one foot before the other. The loading bay was spacious, but it was not without its traps and pitfalls: empty boxes here, stray pallets there, all conspiring to upend the unwary fighter. And Gladio … since Gladio had been religiously keeping up his own training — as ever, nothing had changed there — he was spright and limber and all the things Prompto was currently not. Dodging his sweeping attacks was a crash course in physics and the end-of-term review was he just _wasn’t fast enough_. He couldn’t jump high enough, he wasn’t quick enough off the mark.

             His first mistake sent him reeling over a half-broken pallet, and he yelled out on instinct, caught his breath, perspiring his shock away as he turned back, trying to be ready in time for the follow-up.

             ‘C’mon, Prompto, stay on your feet!’

             Gladio was shouting, yeah, of course he was … but he was still doing his best to be helpful. This was Gladio-encouragement, and Prompto would take that any day. Nice to be cared for, and even if he took it the wrong way and got angry at Gladio’s brusqueness, well, that was just more motivation to keep moving, right?

             He jumped atop a metal camber and cocked his gun, steadying the soles of his feet on the rickety beam and aiming …

             Avoid the head, come on. Square in the chest. You can do it.

Flash of a second later and he let loose. At the same time, or perhaps just before, Gladio went into a duck-and-cover, and the rubber bullet missed its mark by a number of inches. Prompto cursed and jumped off the beam, ankle turning on the concrete floor, aiming again, pulling the trigger to the edge of ready and _oh, right on, there we go._

The rubber bullet bounced off Gladio’s protective vest. Gladio’s face was, for a second, a picture of shock, which melted abruptly into determination. Gladio retaliated with a spin, a drawing back of his centre of gravity, and a forward-thrust to give a jackhammer food for thought.

             Prompto barely dodged that one, and the rush of steel by his ear had all the screaming strength of a freight-train. He stumbled in the inertia left in Gladio’s wake, barely having the time to turn and fire again. Come on, come _on!_

His manoeuvre would require alternating his footing, and twisting around to get a lower angle on the shot he wanted to take.

             He miscalculated. Badly.

             Gladio attacked with a swipe and a thrust; the blunt of his sword smacked Prompto’s face and then the butt hit him square in the chest. A crash, a clatter; Prompto fell back against the chicken-wire fencing — a full metre-and-a-half to travel — and when he hit it, he hit it hard.

             Something behind him caught his eye, a flash of blue, a flickering, a chuntering engine-like noise. He glanced at it as he shook his shoulder out from the force of the fall. A small electricity generator, sparking away as it chugged through power to charge up the pallet trucks. It was little, inconsequential and out of the way.

             Oh, now, why hadn’t he thought of that before?

             His head —

            

_His head spins and he’s facing Iedolas in the Operations Room, popping open the seal on a lightning flask and watching the white light flicker out, letting his muscles seize up as Iedolas gets caught in the blast and the pair of them fall to the floor writhing and in agony and oh god it’s perfect and really now Prompto, you can do much better than that…_

The insidious thought vanished as quickly as it came, as if it was a living creature that could sense Gladio’s attention upon it. Prompto stood up quickly, pretending his shoulder wasn’t as sore as it really was, and he pushed pushed _pushed_ the destructive thought way down until he could almost convince himself he had never been thinking about hurting himself at all.

             ‘You okay?’

             There was something therapeutic about the way Gladio’s brash voice grabbed his attention whole. He appreciated that gruffness a lot more than the awkward, bumbling phrases of earlier. Straightforward, no-nonsense: much easier to parse. Suited Gladio better, too.

             ‘Yep. Yep — I’m good.’

             ‘Okay. Keep on your guard. Your shoulder’s a weak point — you’ll have to move your feet more to compensate for the turns.’ Gladio shook his arm out, and steadied his grasp on his practise sword. ‘I’m coming in again.’

             This time Prompto really tried.

             His leaps and draws grew stronger, his footing grew more practised, and he was starting to anticipate Gladio’s lunges a lot more fluidly. Not five minutes later, he had almost completely forgotten about the cock-up.

             Until he miscalculated again. He couldn’t place what it was, exactly. Could have been a combination of fatigue and stress, could have been an overestimation of his skills. Or just the bodily effects of being out of practice for so long. At any rate, he got his footing utterly wrong, trying to come in from the side and surprise Gladio after a feint in the wrong direction.

             He didn’t even see Gladio’s sword sweep his feet away. This time he didn’t fly anywhere, he just crumpled to the ground, back then butt then legs, and Gladio followed the sweep of his sword and finished the act, one broad hand pressing down on his breastbone, high up enough to effectively be holding his throat. Gladio’s knee found his forearm, incapacitating him enough that the gun wasn’t a hazard.

             He was pinned to the ground.

             His eyes flew wide. Mouth open, barely a protest escaping but for a stuttered, wordless cry.

             ‘Still ain’t fast enough to get the jump on me,’ Gladio growled, but then something seemed to register in his eyes and he stopped.

             As Gladio began to slowly remove his hand, Prompto panicked all the more. _Don’t take my gun, don’t…_

His grip on the weapon increased. His eyes darted about as he tried to figure out the best move to get up and away. And, at the same time, his mind was sending out so many sparking signals he thought he would lose track of reality entirely. Golden light and shadows. Pressure, lifting, but why? Only to come down harder later? Why else would it lift? There was no other reason, no other way out of this and he was trapped and this was definitely going to hurt —

             ‘Hey. Hey, snap out of it!’ Gladio’s voice, coming through strong and tinged with worry. It cut through the fug enough for Prompto to focus his eyes on Gladio’s and notice them for what they were: those of a friend. Gladio didn’t smile but his face was kind enough, and he gently pulled Prompto up into a sitting position.

             When he had stopped hyperventilating, he realised Gladio had in fact been incredibly careful about hand placement. At no point had he exerted pressure upon the gunshot wound below his collarbone — the one on the left, the one that served as his living reminder of a promise unfulfilled from Ardyn — and this minor detail went a long way to putting Prompto at ease. Gladio had remembered. Gladio had cared.

             He loosened his grip on his gun, and flicked the safety on. Trigger finger braced against the frame, off the trigger but close enough — just in case. He breathed. Once, then twice, and he kept it going. Bit by bit, regaining a sense of himself.

             He was okay.

             No threat.

             And then, as his sense of reality took hold, so did the embarrassment.

Gladio seemed to sense this too, because he patted him firmly but gently on the back, and said, ‘C’mon, you did good. Let’s get something to eat.’

            

They sat on the steps outside the marketplace, both too sweaty and too tired to consider taking up space at the stall itself. In their hands: fat, hefty burritos slicked with grease and stuffed with vegetables. Un-tainted meat was hard to come by these days, and was rarely worth the risk.

             Prompto dug in to his food, and so did Gladio.

             ‘Mm, not bad.’

             ‘Yeah, I think Espen’s finally getting the hang of it.’

             ‘Still like Rory’s better though.’

             ‘Yeah.’

             Rory had died the year previous on a hunting party gone tits-up when their marks had met them instead with an unexpected ferocity. Again, that risk. Not worth it.

             Prompto thought for a bit on how unfortunate that all was, and his thoughts were tinged by a memory, one of Spiracorn horns laying strewn in a tunnel, of stumbling over and really _noticing_ them … and feeling that same dismal sense of fatality.

             I’m afraid we’re all out of luck, is what his mind said, dropping an octave and adding a layer of honey so that he was doubly sure to pay attention.

             He tried to shrug away the internal words with another bite of burrito.

             ‘You did good, back there, Prom.’

             ‘Oh. Thanks.’

             A hush of silence. Gladio wanted to apologise — _again_ — and Prompto could feel it. He held his breath, scared that if either of them spoke in this moment it would ruin everything and one of them would get pissed and they’d be back to square one and he’d be wondering why he ever broke the hermetic seal on his own front door to brave the outside world again.

             The moment passed. Gladio took another bite out of his burrito, and Prompto found the space to breathe. Everything would be okay.

             He decided, after that, to take the initiative.

             ‘I planted some onions this morning.’

             ‘Oh, yeah?’

             ‘Well, I kinda just watched Mimi planting onions, really. I helped a bit, though,’ he said, and he thought he spied a shadow of a smile on Gladio’s face.

             ‘Yeah? That’s good. Been looking forward to fresher food. Fallstar’s been suffering. Too much garlic in the food — huh — as if that’ll make up for it.’ Gladio grumbled but he ate his burrito with gusto all the same.

             Prompto had barely noticed the taste. He tried to pay a bit more attention.

             Meanwhile, Gladio’s mind was still on Mimi.

             ‘She’s a good kid.’

             Prompto nodded.

             ‘Glad you’re hanging out with her.’

             ‘Yeah?’

             ‘Yeah. She don’t talk to many people, you know.’

             This made Prompto feel satisfied, in the kind of way one could only get from a truth spoken by a third party, such as Gladio was in this situation. He wondered what truths about Gladio he’d find out from someone else. Hopefully something that would make him glow just as much as this. Maybe a _well, he never offers to train anyone much any more, but he made such an exception for you._ Or, _he doesn’t usually say more than two words at a time to most people._

And he had to stop those thoughts, before he became too disgusted at the idea that he wanted to be _special_. He wasn’t.

             He peeled apart the wrap, to get at the next section of burrito, and out from the paper flopped some stringy vegetables, and something white and bulbous and only half-shucked. The hell?

             It took him a moment to realise it was a garlic clove. Just as Gladio had commented upon earlier. Somehow he had not quite expected a whole clove to be simply thrown in the food like that, so, with curiosity, he picked it out and examined it. Beside him, Gladio snorted.

             ‘There, what did I tell ya?’

             The half-shucked nature of the skin made him want to complete the action that Espen had clearly never finished in his hasty preparation. So he did. Thin, vitamin-deficient fingernails were just strong enough to prise away the rest of the skin and — lo and behold, beneath it all, the clove was utterly, depressingly rotten. Well, not so much rotten as tired and host to pockmarked signs of decay. White singed to brown at the edges of what, on human skin, would have translated to ulcers.

             The underside of the clove was soft, too, as though whatever had caused the decay was still eating away at its fleshy insides. Prompto’s fingers squeezed harder than he had intended, and some ochre ooze threatened to seep out. He gagged.

             ‘Ugh. I’ll have to talk to him about that,’ Gladio was saying, but Prompto barely heard it. He was falling away to the sight and the sensation, and his nose was busy adding false inputs of its own; a laboratory-like smell of death and grime, of copper and stale milk.

             He scrunched his eyes shut. His fingers trembled and he dropped the clove. Panicked, because he _had_ to see where it fell in case anything poured out and infected the things around him and _no_ , he couldn’t let that loose on Lestallum, just because _he_ was fucked-up from it…

             A lot of this thinking made no sense to the rational part of his brain. Leaps of logic were occurring in fits and starts like a rickety old car engine, and yeah, that made him think of _other_ things too, and overwhelmingly like a layer across it all was the memory of the sour dream of soil and the worm. He couldn’t hold both these things — the rational and the nonsensical — in his mind at once, and just like that, it became too much. He broke down in front of Gladio in spectacular fashion, sobbing in the clammy Lestallum air.

             The one mercy of sitting on the steps instead of being back at the marketplace was that they were afforded a lot more privacy here. It was late enough that people had long since gone home from work, but early enough that the streets had not yet filled with drunks and social gatherers heading to or from the local watering holes. This was a fact he was only dimly aware of, because not much mattered when the mental hurricane hit with such force, and he was far more focussed on making sure the infection from the garlic didn’t reach him. He had the awful sneaking suspicion it was already harboured in his own body, biding its time just as he had in that cell, waiting for some innocent trigger to make it free.

             He was sure he was making some kind of loud noise, something louder than just sobbing … he must have been, because Gladio — was that Gladio? — was shushing him, telling him it was okay. Well. Whoever it was. Low, deep rumble. Would be threatening if it wasn’t so lanced with worry.

             That high pitch … why wouldn’t it stop?

             His hands found his head and he folded in on himself as he tried to stop the worm birthing from whatever seed had been planted inside him. So fucking dumb. So _fucking_ dumb.

             ‘Hey, shh, it’s okay,’ Gladio was saying.

             ‘I … I don’t think … augh!’ He sobbed into the dry air. ‘I don’t want him to… He’s…’  He tried to start sentences again, but they ended truncated in wordless noises, as before.

             ‘I don’t know how to help you, Prompto…’

             Gladio… Gladio sounded so upset.

             Something shifted in his heart and he was able to see beyond his own trauma, just for a second. Still it was foggy and tinged with pain at the edges, but he could glimpse Gladio’s pain too, and it compacted onto his own and it reminded him how taxing it was, how emotionally burdening to deal with that when he himself was not healed. But his heart broke for Gladio, just seeing it.

             To blame yourself was always a horrible thing.

             He reached out his hand. No tentative pause, barely a tremble. The action was just born from a single desire: _soothe_.

             It might not be okay, but at least I’m with you, he thought. _If that counts for anything._

             The first few moments of touch were like magic. A long-lost sensation he was reuniting with, like returning to an old home. How could it ever have been so soft as this?

             Gladio grunted, shifted, then pulled Prompto in slowly for a big bear hug. He didn’t pull hard, and he took his time, moving in, holding him, cradling his upper body the way his own hands were cradling his head. An admission of softness, an offer of reprieve, and it was worlds apart from what was going on inside his head but it was exactly what he needed.

             He broke into sobbing again. It wasn’t loud this time, but it wracked his body and made him shiver in Gladio’s embrace. Gladio moved, asked, ‘What is it?’

             It must have been the tense way he was holding himself. He tried to unclench the muscles in his arms, to relax bit-by-bit, but it wasn’t all that effective.

             ‘I thought I… Uh, you know. Like, this is real, isn’t it?’ He pressed Gladio’s forearm with purpose.

             ‘Yeah. This is real.’ Again, Gladio’s gruff, straightforward tone helped, and Prompto could have laughed with how effective that was, and how ridiculous everything suddenly seemed.

             ‘It’s so silly. I got worried it might be… I mean, it was too soft and too comforting and…’ He sucked in breath and the rest of his words tumbled out in a rush. ‘Thought he’d break the spell any second. He’d be waiting at the foot of the stair and I’d be such an idiot for believing it’d be okay.’

             A grunt from Gladio. He had figured out who he was talking about.

             ‘Do you see him now?’

             ‘No, I … I don’t wanna think any more about him.’

             ‘That’s fair,’ said Gladio, ‘that’s fair.’ He didn’t mention Ardyn again, and that was a relief. He hugged Prompto a while longer, and somehow it wasn’t awkward, and Prompto wished he could have fallen asleep like that, nestled safe in the arms of the Shield.

 

His apartment seemed different when he finally returned to it. All the windows were closed, but the air was dry and husky, as though someone had left a window open all day. It all seemed slightly off-key from normal, and by nothing too discernible, only a matter of inches.

             Well, it was little wonder it seemed so; it had been a difficult day. A real difficult day. He’d had such a run of those recently, and it seemed particularly cruel when he had tried so hard. When Mimi and Gladio had tried so hard too. Going out of their way to be nice. But it felt awful, as though the theme for the day had been utterly set from the moment he’d woken from his dream. It didn’t leave him feeling  hopeful for anything to come, because how could he remain hopeful when even earnest kindness wasn’t enough to fight against fate?

             Iggy would probably whack him with his stick right now for being so fatalistic. He knew what Iggy — and any sensible, logical human being — would say: _it’s just a bad day, and a bad day doesn’t mean anything deeper. No cosmic destiny, you’re not tied down by fate._

             Fate was in his hands, to an extent at least, and he had to do something to make it better.

 

He went to the factory gates the next morning. Signed on with Annie. ‘Yeah, I’ll be coming back in now. If you’ll have me. I’m, uh … feeling a little better. I think.’

             ‘That’s great!’ Annie said, and he wasn’t sure how genuine that was, he was too out-of-touch with social interaction to be able to tell. ‘Well, you just take it easy,’ she said, ‘and don’t work yourself to breaking point again, okay?’

             Was that really what she thought had happened?

             He couldn’t imagine anyone in Lestallum not having heard about his delirious walkabout the week previous. She had to be simply being polite.

             He nodded in response, and tried not to look as guilty as he felt.

             ‘Thanks. Yeah. Will do.’

             ‘Okay … here you go.’ She cranked the gate open. ‘Holly’s down at the generator core. She’ll let you know what to get started on.’

             He tried out a shy smile on her, and slipped inside, heart thudding. Gladio and Ignis might even be _proud_ of him. It’d certainly be something for them to make talk of next time they met.

             He reached the elevators. Punched in the large buttons on the control panel, feeling the raised shape of the numbers beneath his fingers. He took the elevator not down and to the generator room, but up, up to the loading bay near the cable cars, which, at this time of day would be slow and devoid of activity. Still a few hours remaining until the morning shipment needed to even start to be prepared. That gave him a lot of time.

             He opened the door, and headed in and over, over to that quiet corner where the compact power generator lay, next to its rows of pallet trucks, plugged in and fully-charged. The generator was only about as big as an electric guitar amp, and it wouldn’t be hard to lift, and carry somewhere a little more out of sight. He had his screwdriver and his knife in his pocket, so he could claim maintenance if anyone happened to interrupt him unsheathing a wire from its protective casing. He had a small Magitek resistor, to lower the voltage enough to make it non-lethal. He had all this ready, the tools and the excuses and the barely-containable excitement that soon, he’d feel better. And so, he set to work.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I played drinking game bingo to the disappointingly bland Ardyn anime, which, arguably, is a much better way to cope than poor Prompto's discovery of that generator xD


	4. You Judge Me Once For Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Prompto's self-destructive spiral is punctuated by a revelation, of sorts, from Gladio. Coping is difficult, and developing feelings for someone, well, that just complicates things...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shouldn’t write chapters when I’m emotionally compromised. Or, well, maybe I should. Just. Goddamn. Too much and all at once.
> 
> Anyway I saw a cover band play Welcome to the Machine this week and I'm a multitude of feelings now.
> 
> Mind the tags.

 

The presence of electricity in his life again was intoxicating. Every time he stayed late at work, every time he crouched by the generator, feeding the force onto bare skin with the aid of resistors and wires and clips, his world would light up for a few precious moments, long enough to calm the horror of being alive.

            His mind would do strange things while it was happening; remembering how Noctis — _Noctis, damn, how beautiful you were —_ how his eyes had flashed violet as the sparks from Ramuh’s summoning stone flew around him, remembering how it had looked like strobe lighting at a rock show, how he’d felt the shock through the soles of his boots. _Poor Luna_ , Noctis had said. The strain must have been so hard on her. And then he’d see her blonde-framed face between flashes of his own ecstatic shock, her face her smile her words on scented paper and the poor dog died in the end, didn’t she? Pryna — _Tiny_ — Luna’s dog — all the names the cute little mite had.

            It was so fucking unfair that such innocent creatures had to die — but _here_ , _look,_ the pain would make it better. Push it out of the foreground. At least for the shortest of whiles.

            He would often watch the pulsing of the tendons in his forearm in the soft, quiet moments after the deed was done — and sometimes he had to really strain to end it, sometimes only stopping when his heart felt kind of floppy and balloon-like — and it was fascinating, seeing the flesh move on its own like that. _What I’ve done_ , he’d think, and he’d feel such a surge of self-satisfaction. Control.

            It was good. It was beyond good — it felt fucking amazing.

            But it didn’t quite scratch that itch.

            Didn’t matter. He found he could handle Gladio’s training sessions a lot more easily when he had the promise of such sweet release afterward. They fed into each other in a way; the adrenaline rush from the first meeting the endorphins from the second, and in this manner, both activities became a way for him to let off steam, keep things under control, and of course, help him keep up attendance at work.

 

‘Your turnaround has been quite remarkable.’

            The voice shocked Prompto out of his thoughts. He was poring over the second-to-last sudoku puzzle in the book, and damn, two years… the thing had lasted a long time.

            ‘Yeah?’ He looked up at Ignis, and it didn’t matter that Ignis couldn’t look back, he could hear him shift well enough. And yeah, there it was, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.

            ‘Yes. Quite remarkable indeed. And Prompto,’ — here he leaned in — ‘you can stand to be a little more proud of yourself, you know.’

            Prompto tried to turn his disparaging snort into something that sounded more shy, and hoped Ignis wouldn’t notice. The twitch at Ignis’s brow made his stomach turn, though, and he knew decisive action was needed. _Before he notices, before he makes a big deal, before he cottons on._

            ‘C’mon, Iggy, we heading down to the bar or not?’

            ‘As ever,’ Ignis said, and his voice betrayed no ill will. Prompto settled down within his own skin, and got ready to go.

            He could have thanked Ignis for taking the time to visit, but it didn’t feel like the right moment. He’d missed his chance when Ignis had first come in, it was too late now, it would have to wait for later or risk sounding awkward. Anyways, Ignis must know, mustn’t he? Surely. If he was clever enough to know when Prompto was avoiding things, he’d know too that Prompto was grateful for all these little check-ins, these little attempts to keep contact going. He didn’t appreciate it all the time, especially not when Ignis caught him on a real bad day and it felt like mothering and smothering and fucking irritating as hell, but overall, yeah. It made a fucking difference. Much more than he could admit without fear of sounding pathetic.

            And that only made him feel worse, when he thought about the generator and the pain and the well-intentioned _oh, you should be proud._

            His shoulders felt heavy and he didn’t bring a scarf or a warm coat with him as he walked together with Ignis down the dusky, dusty streets. Thick cloud above them, thick cloud in his mind, Ardyn’s voice in his head and other loudnessess chittering away at the sides, and really, everything was okay, this was a manageable sort of hell, a manageable sort of normal, and when he got to the bar he pushed the door open for Ignis and let the chatter inside spill over and drown out his own.

            Gladio was already there, nursing a draught at one of the larger oaken tables. It was late afternoon, and the place was full of lazy Sunday clientele, sparse and languid in their occupation of space. Prompto took a seat beside Gladio, and Ignis sat opposite, so he could hear both their voices equally.

            Things were going okay.

            ‘I didn’t want ‘em to go ahead and close the kitchen before you guys got here, so I went and ordered some food,’ Gladio said.

            ‘Oh yeah? What’cha get?’ He surprised himself, sometimes, with how peppy he sounded.

            ‘Just some fries and roasted mushrooms.’

            Prompto watched Ignis’s nose twitch. He had to concur; it sounded damn delicious.

            ‘I daresay I could eat an entire bucket of that,’ Ignis said after a while, and his usual habit of understating the ridiculous went over well — a hearty chuckle from Gladio, and Prompto was surprised to hear a small ‘Hmph’ escape his own mouth unbidden.

            ‘Well, good thing I ordered enough for the lot of us,’ Gladio replied, and the smirk that now danced across his face was something that, until just recently, might have given Prompto cause for alarm.

            He was, at best, ninety nine percent sure that Gladio wasn’t Ardyn in disguise. That troublesome one per cent had not let up its lodgings, so, like an evasive landlord, he cast a blind eye to it. Possibilities were always there, and they were something he just had to live with.

_Grab a drink. Get one for Iggy._

Turned out Ignis just wanted a soda. Bit annoying — he had wanted to treat him to wine, since he had the spare cash these days. May the Gods bless a regular work schedule and a barely-held-together semblance of an adult life, if blessings were something they even gave any more.

            ‘How long do you reckon they’ll be able to hold out in Meldacio?’ Ignis was saying, as he was coming back, drinks in hand.

            ‘Mmn, at the current rate we’re burning supplies, I’d give it another twelve months, tops. Unless something happens about that pass.’

            ‘We don’t have much of a budget left, but I’ll run the numbers by Holly again. I’d like to reactivate the power lines.’

            Of course. They had been torn down by daemons sometime last year.

            An inaudible plea to Ignis: _Please don’t turn this into a business meeting._ And then, to himself, because he was already staring into the shadowed corners and catching Gladio’s hair all wrong in the low light, _Don’t think about Ardyn._

            He shouldn’t be worrying. Everything was fine. So he sat there as the conversation turned to overtime and sleepless nights and all the mundane, small fragments of life in an ever-strained outpost town. Food arrived; the scent filled his nostrils and the cravings of grease and fat hit him in waves.

            They all made short work of the food, and then time seemed to stand still. A little pocket of gravity that contained animated voices and the clinking of glasses. Prompto exhaled as the bubble seemed to constrict, as though an even, deep breath might break it.

            Lestallum rooms, Lestallum nightlife soaking the air, Lestallum décor and Lestallum lights. It all went hand in hand with a feeling of such deep anguish and yet another of intense nostalgia. He missed the first time he had come to this town, he wanted to scrub out the second, and every time since then had been comprised of a stomach-churning mix, feeling both at once.

            He stewed in the feeling and drank up.

            ‘I heard about Rory,’ Ignis said.

            ‘Yeah. Damn shame.’ Gladio growled into his beer.

            They talked about Rory. Dark humour, some of it, but they missed him. It made sense Ignis had not heard about his demise until just recently; he’d been overtaxed with almost every other job of municipal importance in the town, and it had only been a few months since the incident, anyway.

            Then Prompto made a joke about how Ignis ought to teach Espen how to shuck cloves properly, because the man was utterly useless without Rory’s help, and he got a sort of approving look from Gladio, because of course, Gladio remembered the garlic and the late night freak-out. The sense of being somehow _strong_ , or at least seen that way, gave him a spurt of confidence, a glow to his insides that definitely wasn’t the fault of the liquor.

            He started to think _yeah, this could be okay. This is going all right._

            Someone kicked the jukebox into life. Of course, it wasn’t really a jukebox, just an old mp3 player hooked up to a crumbling PA system. Sub-bass _whomp_ and static crackle as the patron who was after a song stumbled on the controls. Then, the scratch of a guitar, and a recorded voice hit the air, reedy and desperate, as if the man behind it had the most incredible urge to slough off his own skin.

            _‘He’s seen too much of life. And there’s no going back.’_

            As the bar filled up with the evening crowd, Prompto shrugged off the minor panic that accompanied the bustle of bodies, but not before Ignis noticed — heard his fidgeting hands — and relocated them to a smaller table, down one of the bar’s two narrow corridors and into the spill over zone on the right. Smaller. Quieter. Overlooking the back street. Not that there was much of a view.

            The singer was really going for it now.

_‘But there’s a fighter in his mind and his body’s tough._

_‘The years have been unkind but kind enough.’_

            Prompto twitched at the lyric, and thought again of Gladio’s approving gaze. He clenched his hands into fists, not out of anger, but to feel his digits pull into action. He was suddenly full of energy. His mind skipped from thought to thought — _these hands wrapped around Ardyn’s neck — tendons twitching under my electric pulse — how early do I have to get up tomorrow? — damn those roasted mushrooms had tasted good —_

            When he focussed back on the conversation, unsure of how much time had passed, he found that Gladio and Ignis had turned to discussing history. Gladio had been reading another military tactics book, one that had — apparently — gone into discussing tactics that may or may not have been used in the ancient Solheim wars.          

            ‘So I wonder why they would’ve targeted that place,’ Gladio was saying.

            ‘If one were to hypothesise,’ Ignis said, ‘that water symbolised death among the people of Solheim, it would stand to reason that they’d build a mausoleum beside an enormous lake. It must have held a lot of significance.’

            They almost forgot they were talking about the Vesperpool. A quick and quiet glance at Prompto, from the both of them, separately and self-consciously. Prompto pretended not to notice, and let them continue, because it was easier that way.

            He could have butted in. He could have said _wait, no, it wasn’t a mausoleum, not exactly_ , but he didn’t want to think about how or why he knew that. He imagined the nøkk guiding his hand, leading him stumbling through shadows and fronds and knee-deep water, and the memory was sugar-sweet.

_I’m on a boat where every so often the bottom drops out, and I’m bailing out water cos the depths are so freaking terrifying and it’s cold and I don’t want to drown and everyone around me’s just staring like, why isn’t he rowing?_

_Why don’t I just drown?_

He didn’t like the idea that there was no answer to that, so he necked the rest of his bottle instead. Drowning by another name — a bit more socially acceptable.

            ‘You okay, Prompto?’

            ‘Yeah.’

            Too quick? Nah, probably fine. It was nice that Gladio cared, but he didn’t want the attention, every signal in his brain spiking in an attempt to push the spotlight away from him.

            ‘Prompto, are you really okay?’ Ignis, now. This was a pincer movement by the pair of them, however unintentional, and Prompto felt himself bristling, helpless to stop it. So he reacted, a bit more angrily than he might have otherwise.

            ‘Yeah. I wish you all would stop asking me, already.’

            Gladio looked like he was going to say something, but Prompto fixed him with a challenging look.

_You don’t want a repeat of the last time we went drinking, do you?_

There was no repeat. Prompto went up for another round and didn’t ask the others what they wanted, and he ordered some spirit he forgot the name of because the point was that it would be a significant percentage of ethanol and it would burn his belly more than his mind. He was halfway back to his place when he was cornered by Gladio in the dark corridor. Low ceilings. Made Gladio tower somewhat. Perhaps he’d been intending to say something further, or check on him. Perhaps he just needed a piss.

            Gladio said something. He couldn’t hear it above the music, so he assumed it was something sarcastic. He considered throwing his drink in Gladio’s face, then thought that would be a waste. He tried to straight-up ignore him, mutter something, push past, and Gladio stopped him, and _there,_ it was something about the physical contact that did it. As if the act had awakened some slumbering, forgotten thing, reactivated the desire for _connection_. Not like they hadn’t gotten used to each other’s touch during their sparring sessions, but that had its own time and place. Here, a different set of social rules governed everything, and so it was notable. It was different. Prompto raised his own hands until they met the hand pressed softly but firmly to his chest.

            He first imagined that he would attempt to push Gladio away, and hard. A surge of some intense emotion eclipsed everything, and he moved and Gladio moved and he wondered if they were fighting now, if that’s what they had stooped to. Hot breath and gruff half-words, the sensation of skin against skin and the closeness, the _closeness_.

            It ended with them furiously kissing, unnoticed by their fellow patrons, grasping for each other in the shadows of the corridor.

            Perhaps it lasted less than a minute, but it felt so much longer. Prompto was aware he was still trying, desperately, to scratch that itch, hoping this was the answer, and something about his desperation was echoed in Gladio. Before he was fully aware of it he was so, so turned on.

            He wondered if they were going to go any further. What about all the way? His heart was bottoming out into a deep pit, a sinking brick, and it was a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time. There was something so different about sex when you had such a _connection_ to the person outside of it. The instant it meant something deeper and closer it changed the quality of the touch, it felt that much more inescapable.

            And he was drowning all over again now, feeling the flush, the heat in his body, just below his stomach and shivering up his sides. It was fizz slowly being released from a bottle, to the point of being almost ticklish. So freaking intense for a few jackhammer seconds, then mercifully, it simmered down.

            He was drunk enough to fumble in the corridor, but not drunk enough to delve below the belt. He stopped short.

 

The music kept playing and the hum of background noise continued on. They stood only a foot apart, and Gladio presented him with an almost stricken expression. Like a dog awaiting an unkind word from its master, Prompto thought numbly. He realised, with a warm drop to his stomach, that Gladio felt guilty, that he was awaiting approval that what they had just done was _okay_.

            It felt strange to have that power, and he had to resist the urge to block out that strangeness by forcing himself under Gladio’s touch again.

            He nodded. Gladio didn’t need to explain himself; he’d felt it in his lips. It hadn’t been a possessive kiss, it had been so full of care, and he accepted that, he felt it so keenly. It was okay.

            It was okay.

            ‘I’ll, uh, get you another drink,’ Gladio said when he finally found his voice again.

            Prompto followed his eyes. The small tumbler was on the floor; miraculously it had not broken. Liquor was everywhere though.

            ‘No, it’s okay, you don’t need to—’

            And then Gladio hugged him, and in its desperation he was reminded of the last hug they’d shared on the steps outside the marketplace. Actions, in place of words; it’s what Gladio did best. If Gladio hadn’t hugged him, he might have mistaken this whole thing for some base attraction, but then, slowly, things began slotting into place. Each searching look Gladio had given him, the amount of times he’d spotted him dinner just to make sure he ate something, the care and attention he’d given towards keeping up physical training with him. The mere _fact_ that Gladio had brought up the Keep in the first place, all those weeks ago. In Gladio’s own gruff, awkward and somewhat clumsy way, he had been trying to tell him something.

            Prompto sniffed into Gladio’s shoulder. He was having a significant amount of trouble with the idea that Gladio _liked_ him.

            _Don’t do it, don’t say I’m special. Don’t say I’m beautiful. Don’t say…_

He lost track. He just continued hugging.

           

When they made it back to the table where Ignis waited — a little perplexed, and more than a little suspicious as to why they had both taken so long — they made no mention of what they had done. Gladio, who had made sure to return with fresh drinks for everyone in hand, made some flip comment about the table being shaky, and they settled back down. In true diplomatic fashion, Ignis did not press the issue. He accepted the drink he hadn’t asked for with remarkable charm and grace, and Prompto found himself wondering, with no small amount of jealousy, what could be going through the man’s head, and how on earth he managed to keep himself so composed.

            They talked about stupid shit after that. Gladio didn’t like the band on the jukebox. Prompto disagreed with him on the complexity of the chord progressions. Ignis, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything, said their previous album had been much more airplay-worthy.

            The bar was hardly running dry, but Prompto didn’t stay for more than a few. He considered moving on to the basement nightclub a ways down the street, finding someone there who looked like Gladio, or maybe that darker shadow, and getting his brains fucked out until the stupid early hours.

            He could do that, and have it feel like murder, or he could take the easy, lonely way out.

 

Kitchen in the early hours. The darkest hours in an already-dark world. Little point in turning the lights on so he just sat there, pulling out one of the wobbly plastic-form chairs and trying to focus on the glass of water he’d poured himself as a last-ditch bid to save his head in the morning.

            He should have gone to the nightclub. Fucked out his frustration. The slick, dark, roiling sensation in his body wasn’t something he could purge by himself, not without injury.

            Focussing on the glass of water wasn’t working. His attention kept drifting to the heavy metal to the right of it instead. His gun, left in easy reach, by the counter. A glint in the dark. Familiar. Suddenly it seemed too dangerous to leave it there on its own. What-if scenarios clustered in his memories, responding to the unspoken threat of the gun’s presence. His throat felt raw, his tongue heavy. So he picked it up, and tossed it from hand to hand, acting curious as a child despite knowing its every hammer and join. Impressive how he’d come such a long, long way since the first time he’d picked up that gun.

            He got so sick and tired of acting frightened. That skittish, wincing boy he saw in the mirror sometimes — what the hell was he doing? Fuck. No, fuck that. He’d stare down the devil straight between the eyes, and this was no fool’s fantasy, this was born from absolute apathy and he didn’t doubt he was capable of it any more.

            He wondered, briefly, what the hell Gladio saw in him. There was a wave of regret there, as he considered the fact that he’d never be good enough, or stable enough, to gratify whatever need Gladio might feel towards him.

            A moment where someone must have moved upstairs and he could swear the door to his bedroom was moving, swaying like someone had pushed it to a gentle close. In a flash of another reality, he saw the hand nudging it to, the spider-web cuffs swinging, the soft not-quite-a-laugh not-quite-a-grunt and the implicit, imperial command hidden within. Follow on through and he’d find him waiting. Ardyn. Nestled on the end of the bed like a lone chaser on a bar stool, waiting for the right one to walk through that door.

            He felt surprisingly little fear. There was only… what was the word? Determination. A sensation like steel in his jaw, adamant and angry and ready, no, _primed_ to react. Not a cog in the machine but a spring, if that was any better. Most of his life he had felt lighter than air, a wisp of a boy, but right now he was heavy water, _tungtvann,_ said something dark and familiar coiled around his ear, and he understood the importance of that and he found himself agreeing.

            _So come, then,_ he thought, and he gave the door a disparaging look.

            If he’d taken a selfie, he’d probably look laughable. Not that he had the faculty to care, right then, because he was thinking about how the whole thing — impressions, fears, social status — really didn’t matter very much.

            In fact, it all seemed so pointless — running through the same motions time and time again, morning after alarm-ridden morning, only, for what? To be a mouse on a fucking wheel. Eat, sleep, shame, repeat. The barrel of the gun found a new target, and the threat of the bedroom lay quite forgotten.

            He sat there for a long time, debating whether or not to pull the trigger.

            The skin of his right temple was so velvety, and so cold with the pressure of metal.

            He was half expecting Ardyn to materialise, to tell him what an idiotic endeavour this all was, and truthfully, had Ardyn done so, he was sure he would have pulled the trigger just to ram home the fact that he wasn’t under his sway any more.

            Well, maybe not. It was always more intimidating when Ardyn was _actually_ there.

            But Ardyn did not show up. Neither did the nøkk, nor any daemon under Ardyn’s patronage. It was just him, the gloom of the unlit kitchen, and the faint hum from the refrigerator.

            This elicited a strange effect in Prompto. He had never felt so alone. He wanted so, so badly to pull that trigger, and yet, in the absence of his tormentor it had become somehow farcical, a waste of a good moment. A prickly feeling hit his nerves and he didn’t put the gun down so much as throw it onto the table. His movements were wild and his hand caught the glass of water, carelessly-on-purpose, and he gratiated himself with watching it hit the floor and burst into shards amid sloppy pools of liquid.

            As he watched the glint and crack of glass, as he listened to the arpeggio spiralling of shards-turned-piano-keys, he understood the prickly feeling to be frustration. It made sense that only in the destruction of something undeserved did it make itself known.

            The shattering helped to break the spell. Adrenaline seeped away from his bones and left him spent as an empty bottle; only the tiniest drips and drabs of that destructive potential remained in the soft hollows of his body. He realised, with a distant sort of horror, that he had been about to kill himself. And, more horrifically, that he had been disappointed that Ardyn hadn’t tried to stop him.

            Everything was wrong, and uncomfortable, and he wanted to blot it out.

_Gods._

            He needed sleep.

            Somehow he found his way to the bedroom. He did not find the presence of mind to avoid the glass on the floor, not caring about the sharpness, not seeing it as a worthy enough obstacle to avoid. Warm, wet slickness from the soles of his feet provided a counterpoint to the clamour in his head that hit as soon as he lay cheek to pillow — clamour that rose in the form of voices sharp and hushed, whispering and snapping, simultaneously telling him everything and nothing at all.

            Sinking into the mattress, which seemed suddenly far too soft and undeserved, he felt the shape of himself on the world, doing nothing but existing; horribly and boldly _existing_.

            And this was _him._ God-fearing. Unable to deal out death. He curled into himself, and tried to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not many days remain until episode ardyn is out now. I feel like Prompto in front of his damn coffee machine, just waiting, *waiting*.


	5. This Wounded Heart Will Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small act of mercy. Prompto and Gladio find some form of solace in each other, while Randolph reveals some information of interest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent the last few weeks plotting out the rest of this story - something I rarely do for fanfiction like this, but there are so many arcs and important points to tie up by the time this behemoth is done, that it helped more than hindered in this case.   
> Also helps having Episode Ardyn outta the way. How about that clusterfuck?  
> I am at least incredibly pleased that the seat of Solheim was located in the Vesperpool (take note of Verstael's maps).

_Cold, clinical corridors. He’s running, like he always is. He can smell disinfectant; something sweet like crème brûlée, carbon all burned beneath the sickliness. Something has died and the chemicals are there to cover it up, but they don’t do their job completely._

_He has to get out of here._

_Behind him, something tremendous and weighty roils about, and it sounds like huge chain links crashing together. A door’s opening, and beyond it is an offering, the promise of a gun to make the battle ahead easier. The last thing he wants to do is accept it._

_He’s not moving fast enough—_

 

A buzzing pierced the air around him. He batted the interruption away, because it was only detracting from his escape. The intermittent noise was so very different from that of the terrifying door opening up behind him, but even as he swatted and swung his hand, as if it was nothing more than an annoying fly, the noise didn’t stop. In fact, it grew louder, gaining upon all other sounds, until he could barely remember why they had been so important in the first place.

            Prompto dragged himself awake proper and realised. Someone was ringing him.

            The ringtone sounded so alien. Hardly anyone ever bothered to call — power conservation and lack of a wide social circle being the principal reasons — so his first assumption was that something had gone wrong at the power plant. Why ring if it’s not an emergency?

            He grappled for the phone; it was slipping out of his grasp on the bedside table. Then, by the time he got a hold of it proper, it stopped.

            He hissed out breath, slowly, as if being roused in such a fashion had been as tough as a hundred metre sprint. His eyes, squinting at the screen, could only make out a faint blur of text. Nothing made sense. _Gods,_ his _head…_

            Prompto let the phone fall to his side. Massaged his head. Wondered what time it was, if he ought to start getting ready for work. He’d overdone it last night, and the more the dream faded the more he started to recall everything.

            _Ugh,_ he didn’t want to think about it. Where was his watch?

            Then, a sound that gave him a full-body flinch. Someone was knocking on the door.

            _Okay. C’mon. Move._

            His feet were sticky on the floor and he distantly wondered why that could be. A sort of lancing, tugging pain on the tender soles.

            He shrugged the sensation away. Door was more important.

 

What he saw when he opened the door didn’t surprise him in the least, even as the imposing silhouette gave him a start.

            _Gladio. Again._

            ‘Hey,’ he said.

            ‘Hey,’ Prompto replied.

            The air felt heavy. Prompto had to say something, before Gladio made things awkward.

            ‘If you’re gonna apologise, don’t you dare.’

            ‘I… Hmm.’ Gladio’s O of an open mouth lapsed shut as he made the most dubious sound. Of course he had been about to.

            Again, silence settling. Prompto didn’t know what to say. _Nice morning?_ Too trite. _How’re you doing after last night?_ Now that was more awkward than anything Gladio could come up with. He watched Gladio’s brow move as the man thought things through, he watched his lips open, close, open, and he thought about how unexpectedly soft they had felt last night.

            ‘I, uh, tried calling.’

            ‘Yeah, I didn’t get to it in time.’

            ‘So, um, I was gonna ask if you wanted to go grab a coffee. I gotta jet off on the next supply run real soon. Gotta get something strong in me first.’

            Just like the last time Gladio had turned up on his doorstep, this was more words than the man usually spoke in a single month. _He’s overcompensating, but he’s trying. Now you have to try not to be irritated._

            Prompto still had an hour before he had to even think about getting ready for work. And he liked Gladio. And he kept thinking about the kiss.

            What the hell.

            ‘Yeah, sure.’ He nodded, then clung to the doorframe, suddenly and abundantly aware his soles were sticky because of the blood, the broken glass, and the chaos of being alone with his shitty coping mechanisms so late in the night. He didn’t want Gladio to see. ‘Gimme five minutes.’

 

Ten minutes later the pair of them were walking down the narrow streets towards Fallstar, the small corner-shop café near the main square.

            He tried to focus on the destination. His feet fucking hurt.

            Mornings like this, where the air hung thick and heavy around them, made every day like the first drive down to the Vesperpool. An interesting side effect of having Gladio beside him right now was that it was incredibly grounding. That part of his mind that always doubted the realness of every situation, that part of his mind that would be otherwise panicking because he’d forgotten his watch, yet again, was mercifully quietened by the man’s presence. _It wouldn’t be the same as then, because Gladio was here._

            The morning escapade ended up being a lot simpler than it had first appeared. They didn’t talk on the way down, and they barely said a word while Todd fixed their coffee. It was a comfortable silence.

            ‘Good shit,’ Gladio murmured, after his first sip, and Prompto found he was focussing on the attractive gruffness in his voice more than usual.

            It was one freaking kiss.

            It shouldn’t mean so much — so why did it? Making him grow hot, making him want to move closer. Why couldn’t it just be like any of the other hookups he’d had? Kiss and fuck and get outta each other’s’ faces.

            Well, they hadn’t fucked yet. Prompto drank down his coffee and considered the idea that maybe they ought to. It wasn’t even a question of how badly he wanted to, because to him, that fact was as obvious as night was night.

            _It would feel so godsdamned good._

            Gladio grunted in appreciation of his coffee, and Prompto suppressed a cough, and tried to shove the thoughts out of his head. He looked at him — a half-glance, really — and took in his muscled arms, felt warm again, and shifted gaze to the cup he was holding. It kind of amused him how Gladio held the small cup with such surprising tenderness.

            ‘You off to Meldacio again, then?’

            He had to say _something_.

            ‘Yeah,’ Gladio replied. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. I mean, you still wanna train, right?’

            There, that hopeful puppy-dog expression, just a hint of it, hiding behind his raised eyebrow. He figured Gladio was probably assuming that was why he was asking.

            He nodded.

            ‘Hell yeah I do.’

            ‘Nice,’ Gladio said, and there was peace between them.

            Prompto finished his coffee. He should have been feeling pleased, and theoretically he was, but at the same time, some indescribable sad feeling swept through him, filling out around his ribs and crushing his chest. He rode it through, tried to force it off, the way someone who had drunk too much might fight down an urge to puke.

            Gladio hadn’t noticed. He was busy putting his empty mug back on the counter, and stretching out.

            ‘Thanks, Todd. Just what I needed. Ugh — now, time to get on with it.’

            Prompto smiled broadly.

            ‘Go get things sorted.’

            Gladio responded to this with his usual gusto, fist meeting opposite open palm and grin cracking wide.

            ‘Will do.’

 

Gladio’s infectious goodwill did not stop him from fixating on his troubling and sexually-loaded thoughts, but it certainly helped him to get through the day, acting as if nothing was up and keeping face for Annie and the others.

            He did the morning safety-check of the engines, watching the pistons cycle round, cogs under the power of a greater machine, and even as he nodded and ticked off little boxes on his worksheet he felt jealous.

            If only some more powerful current would sweep him up under its sway again. It would take away the problem of _choice_ that seemed to cause him so much trouble. He wanted to fall, he wanted the — how should he put it? _Descension._

            What he’d gotten with Gladio was such a small taste ( _oh, you’re such a tease_ ) and he was aware, with ever sinking realisation, that if he wanted more, he’d have to commit. Take the initiative. And there, the problem of _choice_ again. Getting himself involved in a complicated way with someone he already knew so well… Gods, it would have been so much easier if Gladio was just some randomer.

            _Nothing can stop this, our divine collision. It’s more than mere happenstance._

 _Yeah, fuck. Fuck that._ Some people spent their whole lives searching for connections that held some deeper meaning. Whereas he spent his whole time running from the idea.

            And yet he wanted _him_ — Ardyn, Gladio, whoever had the guts — to revisit those bold and blessed acts of violence and give him the relief he couldn’t get on his own. _Just think of it:_ hands around his neck, forcing him down…

            Right here amid the machines?

            Why not.

            _You’re projecting. Stop it._

Thinking that did little to stop the craving, but it did a lot to make him hate himself all the more. Another tick on the sheet on his clipboard. Another notch to the roster of guilt. Whatever; the engine was fine, and it was time to move on to the next one.

 

On the east side of the town, up a discreet alleyway where few people bothered to go, lay a small smithy nestled between terraced houses. The owner, Randolph, had once asked Noctis about the sword behind the waterfall, and it was for this reason that Prompto was here.

            He didn’t care about the sword or the waterfall any more, but rather, he remembered the uncanny interest the old man had held for stories of myth and legend. It gave him ideas. Something a little more productive to think about in between the moments of guilt and masochism that had plagued his workday.

            It had been just enough to stop him succumbing to the allure of the mini-generator after hours, but he wasn’t sure if it was the greater or lesser of two evils just yet. He’d have to see what Randolph could tell him first.

            The door to the little workshop was powder-blue, like Cleigne lobelias — familiar to him for the fact that Mimi had been cultivating a small crop just recently. He knocked, and waited, and in time came a small bent-backed man, bald and bearded and seeming so immensely interested in the details of the world around him.

            ‘Hey,’ he said. The old man looked at him. Expressions crossed that wizened face as he tried to picture where he knew him from.

            ‘Ah! You’re that kid from the power plant.’ He spoke in a deep and proud register — the voice of a man who knew his own worth.

            Prompto thought _kid_ was far too kind, considering how drawn and haggard he had become, but whatever, he’d take it.

            ‘Well, actually, I was with Prince Noctis, when he came here. Before the’ — he braced himself — ‘ _Niffs_ invaded. Um, you spoke to us a bit. You heard we were going to search for the sword behind the waterfall.’

            Randolph clicked his tongue. ‘Knew I knew you from somewhere else. Knew it.’

            ‘I was… kinda wanting to talk to you about that.’

            ‘The sword, now? You boys ever find it?’

            Prompto nodded. A memory: of ice and tunnels and _what I wouldn’t give for a hot bowl of soup._

            ‘Good, good,’ Randolph said. ‘That Talcott, that wee yin — I’m right glad he took my stories so serious. He get the credit he deserved for that tip, now?’

            ‘Yeah. He did good.’

            Randolph grunted. A noise of approval. Then his eyes turned skyward, clouding over.

            ‘Oh, how I’d love to have seen that sword…’

            ‘Wish we could’ve come back, before —’ Prompto considered the end of the sentence, then decided to stop instead.

            Randolph, to his credit, seemed to understand.

            ‘So. Why’re you here, then?’

            ‘You talked about legends. I…’ How to phrase this? ‘I wanted to know… if you knew anything about the Vesperpool. Or, uh, if there’s any legends about _Solheim_.’ The visions from the Keep were still so close; he pronounced the word with an unusual, but achingly intimate stress on the first syllable.

            ‘Solheim and the Vesperpool, hmm?’ Randolph’s brow creased in a direction it had not before.

            ‘Yeah. I mean, since they were the first civilisation to learn to fight the daemons, I’m thinking there’s got to be something of use.’ He felt compelled to append, ‘And, um, the history’s fascinating, too.’

            ‘Of use for us in these dark times,’ Randolph mused. ‘Yes, yes…’ And he fell into pensive consideration.

            Prompto couldn’t tell just how much import that brow-wiggle after his odd intonation had been. Hopefully it was just innocent interest, and not a reaction to the foreign-ness of his accent. But he felt the need to elaborate nonetheless.

            ‘Ignis was saying the other day about the links between the lake and Solheim. That’s why it got me thinking.’

            ‘Scientia?’

            ‘Yeah.’

            ‘Good man. Mm.’ And again, lost to thought, until his ageing memory sparked. ‘Well, there’s a geologist bloke who was asking something similar jes’ recently. Lherzo or something, think his name was… Anyways, ‘e was asking about the metals in the Grove.’

            ‘Mythril?’ Prompto said, far too quick.

            A glint in Randolph’s eye that was almost a wink. Approval, if anything, for being aware of the mineral’s name. May he never know why.

            ‘No, ‘e was more curious about the silver-rock, sølvberg. Don’t let the name fool yis though, it’s more transparent than silver. What did ‘e say it was…? A form of calcite or summat.’ He sniffed. It clearly held little meaning for him. ‘I can form the stuff into weapons. I told ‘im that, but ‘e didn’t care so much for it. Only interested in researching the fault lines, that lad.’

            ‘Fault lines?’

            Randolph shrugged. ‘Beyond my kenning, to tell truth. ‘E says it meant something about landslides, stability or somesuch.’

            Prompto remembered the way that ancient structure had been falling apart, masonry crumbling underfoot and stairways half-sunken. A place to drown in, in more ways than one. If that geologist wanted to study instability, he could think of no spot better.

            Something tickled the back of his neck, soft as a silk scarf. He barely stopping himself from clapping a hand down over his neck. Instead, a sniff and a small shrug — as if that would stop the creeping sensation — and he passed it off as disinterest in the geological subject matter.

            Randolph uttered some small noise of agreement. Evidently, he agreed.

            ‘Well, I think the thing that might be of most interest to you, kid, is quite different…’ His words meandered along, moving like little kings in procession, all so very sure of themselves but with no particular sense of urgency. ‘Yes, hm… Pallareth Pass is where you’d want to go.’

            And then, the phrase that made everything fall into place.

            ‘I heard the Oracle King is buried there.’

 

Mimi was growing new bulbs. Talcott dropped by, and got excited about Randolph’s tip-off. Jeanne gave Prompto’s department a bonus, and word had it that Iris was going to start up her wee thrift store again.

            So many people, all getting on with things, all keen to talk. His social circle painted such a different picture of him than the kitchen table did at two a.m. This was a good thing.

            He even had the lure of the Oracle King, and that exciting development in his personal agenda should have given him plenty of food for thought. Yet all he could think about…

            Gladio didn’t _like_ him like him, did he?

            The question, once it entered Prompto’s mind, wasn’t leaving easily. He had spent all day and all night trying to figure it out. Was a kiss and a fumbled touch a sign of love or a symptom of too much too fast when the price of booze was right?

            Which was why he found himself, the following day, waiting for Gladio to arrive at their training grounds with a new, almost belligerent attitude. He was, in other words, spoiling for a fight.

            When Gladio rocked up, he greeted him with remarkable cheer, no doubt a reaction to the subliminal fighting spirit he was displaying.

            Gods. It didn’t help any that Gladio was looking more rugged than before. It always seemed to be the way when the man had spent a few days out in the field. He was like a wild animal returning to its natural environment: strong and terrifying but also amazingly, innocently happy through it all. His hair hung loosely over his shoulders in locks that were starting to curl with outdoor exposure, and the waves suited him. The way he was breathing, the way he held himself, muscles rippling with energy, Prompto got the impression he could bench press an entire pine tree no problem in that moment.

            _This is exactly what I need._

He stepped forward, aiming to hi-five, but what he got was a clap on the shoulder. Warmth spread across his back; a mixture of the shock of contact and the heat from Gladio’s hands.

            ‘Wedge found this,’ Gladio said, fishing in his bag, then pressing something soft and papery-pliant into his hands.

            A puzzle book. Not sudoku, but crosswords. One of those ‘when completed, they revealed another word for use in the final puzzle’ sort of deals.

            Prompto felt his cheeks contract before he was aware he was smiling.

            ‘Thanks.’

            ‘It’s, uh, already been filled in a bit. No idea who the previous owner was.’

            ‘Thanks,’ Prompto said again, and it was deeper this time, and when Gladio’s eyes connected with his he felt a thrill.

            He grinned, and slipped the book into his bag.

            Gladio clapped hands together, and entered the ‘ring’ — their loose delineation of a fighting space in the hall.

            ‘No weapons?’ Prompto asked.

            ‘Not yet. Hand-to-hand, just for a warm up.’

            Prompto nodded and stepped forward, bouncing from foot to foot, watching Gladio’s movements. The cuts on the soles of his feet were not entirely healed, his fault for not taking care of them properly, but it was good enough for the session.

            Gladio stretched his arms out front and back, and rolled his shoulders in preparation for the fight. Then he hopped to one side — a feint, which was swiftly replaced by a lunge for the other side. Prompto jumped back, then jumped back again and blocked as the onslaught came.

            He was doing well, for a time. He was spry, but he lacked Gladio’s strength. So when a forward kick hit him off-balance, he stumbled backward, landing on the floor on his ass. Gladio followed, towering on top of him, one knee landing hard by his hip, and a boot thudding up near his armpit. If Gladio had been using a sword, if he had been an enemy, he could have impaled Prompto’s heart right there and then. The old wound on his chest gave a sympathetic twitch.

            One short moment of breathless silence. Gladio’s angry eyes, locked on his _._

            ‘Not bad. But try harder.’

            He would have stood up, he was clearly about to, but Prompto grabbed the neck of his vest. Gladio, bewildered now, didn’t quite understand that Prompto wanted him closer. He didn’t move his head down all that quickly, so Prompto closed the distance himself. Yearning, reaching lips met ones parted in surprise. A flinch of confusion at first — _oh shit, maybe I miscalculated this —_ gave way to reciprocation, and soon Gladio was pinning him to the ground, feeding him what he wanted.

            When they broke off, Prompto gazed up at him, pushing locks of hair out of his face.

            ‘I wanna do more.’

            A rumbling ‘mm’ of agreement from Gladio. No turning back now.

 

The walk back to Gladio’s place was strange. Gladio seemed almost _shy_ , and it was surreal to watch such an emotion overtake the usually brash, outgoing man.

            They didn’t need alcohol, so already this was so different from Prompto’s usual hook-ups. Inside the apartment, a little smaller than Prompto’s and amusingly messy, they touched lips the instant they closed the door, feeling each other up inside the narrow hallway before Gladio led him into the bedroom. Curtains closed and shoes kicked off, they grappled for purchase on each other’s bodies while they oriented themselves on the bed. Prompto pushed himself up to the headboard, beckoned Gladio on.

            He knew it was more than a hook-up, it felt different, more portentous — _but hey, you don’t need to think about that right now._

            Putting his hands above his head, begging without words for Gladio to take hold of them. The thrill when Gladio complied.

            A brief, ridiculous moment in which he realised his feet were still all cut up from the glass and he’d have to fuck with socks on — the thought was so dissonant and un-sexy that he almost laughed.

            He let his thoughts drift back to Gladio, and the firm pressure the man was putting round his wrists, the lean-in and the giving up and the passionate kisses.

            He was surrendering.

            It was all soft touch and _romance_.

            Until Gladio said ‘Oh, you’re so _good_.’

            Such a simple phrase, and one that made Prompto freeze in his tracks.

            _You’re so good._

            A shot of adrenaline to his belly, only he couldn’t run like he wanted to.

            _So, so good._

            Past and present collide, one supernova made of dust and shadow — he’s not here, he’s not anywhere except there, where smoke swirls high into ceilings grey and blue, where snow clusters at the door, sealing him in like a tomb.

            It’s so fucking cold he’s shaking, and he wants to put his clothes on.

            _Aww, look at you…_

Shut up, he tells him, shut _up_ , and he’s spinning, losing focus, because _fuck,_ nothing would be better than drifting, in this moment. Despite the underlying fear, the _I think not, focus, my dear,_ lurking just below the surface.

            Pressure, soft and firm, around his body, and then—

            The wire in his mind tripped over and his eyes snapped open. Ready to please. Ready to obey. _I am paying attention._

There was nothing so severe waiting for him. Hair was in his face, but it was long and straight and black. A low, masculine grunt sounded. A face buried itself into his shoulder.

            Only Gladio, hugging him.

            He accepted it, he fell into it, he let himself be held like a rag doll, broken but loved.

            ‘Shit, I’m sorry, Prom…’ Gladio stood, paced. His shoulders were a picture of tension, as if he were trying not to take up so much room. He was probably feeling like his very presence was making things worse. Probably going to walk out the door any second, and if that wasn’t a classic avoidant way for the man to react.

            ‘Please don’t go.’

            Gladio looked like he wanted to flee, so badly, but to his credit he did not. He stayed, and slowed down his pacing until he gained control of himself. What was he feeling — horror? Dismay? Disappointment?

            Eventually he let out a long sigh, wiped his forehead with both hands, as if sloughing off the whole situation like he would sweat from his face.

            ‘Fault lines, that’s all they are,’ Gladio said. ‘You remember. When we stayed that night in the Leville. After I came back.’

            Prompto said nothing. Couldn’t forget it if he tried.

            ‘Said it’ll take a while,’ Gladio murmured. He was looking out the window now, as if there was anything to look at.

            Not wrong, there.

            _And that was even long before the other stuff. Niflheim — mountains — Gralea._

            A glass of water, shakily held, appearing in front of him all of a sudden. He hadn’t even noticed Gladio go out of the room.

            ‘Shut up and drink it,’ Gladio said.

            Prompto twitched, and began to drink. He tried to stop his eyes watering but it wasn’t happening. Gladio realised his mistake quick enough — ‘Ugh, sorry,’ — and bit back on saying any more until Prompto had gotten a few gulps down him.

            It was a curious thing, how he could understand so completely the spirit in which Gladio had made the comment, and yet understanding did nothing to stop the fear. That small part of him thinking _was there something I could have done to make it not be said like that?_

            Now Gladio sat next to him.

            ‘I always admired you, you know? I mean, it’s not just that I’m attracted to you.’

_For my part, I fear that it is just that I’m attracted to you._

            ‘You’re maybe the toughest person I know.’

            _I can handle just about anything, these days._

            ‘You’ve endured too much of others’ desires, and I won’t be another notch on that list.’

_The desire I have for you is something filthy rotten, and you deserve so much more than that._

‘Prompto? You hearing me?’

            ‘Oh! Yes…’

            ‘He’s not here. He won’t be. Okay?’

            ‘It’s hard when it’s… Y’know.’ He bucked a little to illustrate, embarrassed by the fact that suddenly he couldn’t even say the word _sex._ ‘I think he’s messed everything up for me, Gladio…’

            _Gods_ , how plaintive that sounded. Enough to anger him, enough to make him want the lightning on his skin again.

            ‘Ugh.’ He shrugged the pathetic words away. ‘You know what I’m saying, right?’

            ‘Here’s a thought,’ Gladio said. ‘how about we don’t let him dictate your sexuality any more.’

            ‘Not as easy as it sounds.’

            ‘You had your own tastes before he ever showed up.’ That pointed look Gladio gave him made him wonder: _has he clocked me about how I felt about Noct?_ ‘And I believe you’re doing this,’ — Gladio motioned between the two of them — ‘on your own merit. Not his.’

            _I hope so._

            Prompto breathed in for five and out for seven. Then he faced Gladio afresh, and made as if to move closer.

            ‘We don’t have to do anything.’

            ‘No, but I—’

            _I want you to touch me._

            He reached a hand out, and Gladio intercepted it before it touched his groin.

            ‘You don’t have to—’

‘Can we stop talking? Can we please, please stop talking?’

            _I need to shut everyone up, inside and out. I need you to —_

            Prompto leaned in. Kissed. Laid his hands on Gladio’s body. He was overcome by the perverse urge to show Gladio all he had learned. To take his throbbing cock into his mouth, and lap and suck and _worship_.

            Didn’t seem like was going to get the chance — Gladio had moved first. Responding to the need that was so clear in his eyes, Gladio’s hands drifted down to his half-undone belt, completing the action, then he bent his handsome head and kissed down from chest down to belly — and further, and further, until he reached Prompto’s trembling cock.

            ‘Right here,’ Gladio said, his voice warm. He licked from shaft to tip, grunting softly as he did, clearly revelling in the action. And —

            — _Fuck —_

— it was beyond heaven. He wasn’t used to the tenderness, to the immense weight of the care that lay behind it, and his head span as Gladio began to lick and suck harder, giving him the best blowjob of his damn life.

            He closed his eyes at first, but he couldn’t stand that for long. Just so the whispering didn’t start at the corners of the room, he kept them open, and watched Gladio perform his act of reverence, looking like a god in human form the whole while.

            Every so often Gladio would pull his mouth off him entirely, and gaze up, eyes lidded with lust, before returning to the tease and pull. And, seeing Gladio look up at him like that, Prompto was struck by the uncomfortable sensation of having power.

            To his horror, he realised it held some of the same finality to it as when he was the victim. _It’s going to happen, he’s going to worship you, there’s no choice now but for him to submit and suck you off and make you come. He’s going to submit, he’s going to submit._

            That finality tripped him over the edge. He cried out as he came, hands gripping the headboard until his knuckles turned white, and Gladio took every last drop.

 

Takeout was ordered — masala dosas from the Partellum market — and Prompto nestled into the crook of Gladio’s arm, pumping hot, greasy calories into his stomach while Gladio did the same. Neither of them had bothered to dress fully, Gladio only putting on as many clothes as were necessary to answer the door, and they spent a long while inhabiting that soft, comfortable silence that followed sex. Even though Prompto had difficulty considering it _sex_ , when only he had gotten off.

            So, when the food started running low, Prompto pushed his tray aside and spread his hand across Gladio’s groin, rubbing softly.

            He was a little surprised when Gladio shifted away.

            ‘You don’t need to.’

            ‘You sure?’

            Gladio nodded.

            ‘But I… I mean, I don’t want you to—’

            ‘I’m not missing out.’ Gladio guessed the rest of his sentence for him, and he guessed more or less correct.

            It didn’t stop Prompto feeling bad, but there was no arguing with that look in Gladio’s eyes.

            ‘I like you,’ Gladio said, and his voice sounded thick. There, that shyness again.

            Prompto didn’t quite know how to process this — too many thoughts whirling — so he gulped, felt his skin bristle with unbelievable warmth, and he nestled closer and whispered, ‘Yeah, I like you too.’ An offer of a small kiss on Gladio’s chest, and then two more, and he felt Gladio’s chest rise and fall with contentment.

            _Push that skittish creature in your soul far down, Prompto. It doesn’t need to ruin this._

            He fell asleep pressed up against Gladio, feeling as tender as one of Mimi’s little seedlings, safe and warm in the balmy darkness, scarcely believing that he could receive such grace.


	6. I Need Something Stronger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto's relationship with Gladio steadily replaces his masochistic urges, and Randolph's tip-off about the tomb gives Prompto a *perfect* opportunity to get some gears in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, I extended the plan by one more chapter. Big surprise.  
> This chapter features the happiest butts you're gonna read about in this story. C'mon, they need a *bit* of fun!

 

Prompto had not shared a bed with anyone since the church in the mountains. Well, he’d been in bed with others plenty, but he’d never just plain _slept_ with someone else next to him, not without feeling the urge to leave. Last time he had tried, yeah, he’d never made it through the whole night, had he? Such a thing was — in some ways — more intimate than sex. It scared him. It made him feel _owned_ by the presence beside him.

            He had imagined he would not be able to handle it, and indeed, it wasn’t without its raw moments. At one point he woke up in a panic, the gruff sounds of snoring on his neck, and the clamp of a hand on the curve of his ass.

            Then he started to laugh, because it had been so long since they had gone camping he had forgotten Gladio was a Grade A snorer.

            And the fact he was holding his butt while he slept was… cute, actually.

            He woke up a few more times in the night, restless as ever, sleep interrupted by the usual cocktail of bad dreams, panic, and adrenaline. And, each time, he got a hold of the panic, and told himself, _Gladio, not Ardyn._

            Now, the morning, coming in slow like a tide. Hard to tell, but for the time ticking away. Always ticking, always that tiny speck of progress keeping him centred and calm.

            ‘You all right?’

            Gladio had shifted, responding to his wakefulness, and the hand had moved from his butt to hold the bedcovers gently. He propped himself up on an elbow, watching in the barely-darkness for signs of unease.

            ‘Yeah, ’s’all good.’ Prompto’s voice was slurred with sleep, despite his mind being alert. He untangled himself from Gladio’s embrace, but lazily so, because there was little threat to spur his movements on.

            Gladio groaned when he noticed the time. ‘Work,’ he muttered.

            ‘Yep.’

            ‘Ugh.’

            The mundanity of it made Prompto laugh, and once he had started, he found it hard to stop.

            The hour was too late; they had no time for breakfast. Quickest of showers, with the water running a little cold, and a warm flurry of kisses to counter it, then the pair of them were out on the streets in the bracing wind, ready to weather another day in the last bastion of Lucis. Prompto preferred it this way — simple, discreet, no fuss or fluff around the edges. He still didn’t entirely feel like he deserved it.

 

The second time they got together, they went further.

            Prompto had given it a few days to cool off, because hell, they were adults, and fuck neediness. It wasn’t a race. He had no space for that, and he got the sense Gladio didn’t either.

            He hadn’t fucked the same person twice since he’d settled in Lestallum. So, heading on over to the Hunter HQ after work made him feel all sorts of gross. Maybe it was that even the smallest hint of an obsession was enough to make it similar to _him._ Well, at the very least, the purpose of his visit was not sexual. He had things to talk about. Work things. Useful things. He wasn’t an obsessive creep.

            The weather was bad; miasma fog rolling up from the plains opposite, buoyed by the microclimate in the gorge. Everywhere was soup.

            ‘You done? I wanna talk to you,’ was all he said by way of a greeting, when Gladio eventually emerged from the office. It was a pre-fab unit, designed for construction workers, and when he leaned on the flimsy sheet metal frame it made a bassy din.

            Gladio’s grizzled face broke into a grin when he caught sight of him. A slight raise of the hand, then he settled into himself, legs shoulder width apart and arms vaguely crossed, clearly comfortable with Prompto’s presence. He didn’t skip a beat at Prompto’s bold greeting, in fact, he seemed to prefer it to any softer alternative.

            ‘Oh yeah? So what’s up?’

            ‘So I was talking to Randolph the other day.’

            ‘Randolph?’ A pause. ‘Oh, that old guy.’

            ‘Yeah. I heard something interesting about the Pass.’

            ‘Pallareth?’

            He nodded. ‘Something’s buried there. And I’m thinking — you know that turn-off partway up, kinda close to the tunnel? Before Meldacio? The one with the barricades, and that big concrete door.’

            Gladio pondered this.

            ‘We already explored behind that sealed door last year. Didn’t find much.’

            ‘Yeah, but…’ He paused. ‘Hmm. I think there’s something there.’

            Gladio’s eyes, an unspoken challenge. _Why?_

‘Randolph said Oracle King. If it’s anything like the other tombs, it’s probably hidden a lot deeper underground. There’s gotta be a seal we missed.’

            Gladio grunted, in that way Prompto interpreted as _Makes sense._ ‘When we were there, we were assuming it was just an Imperial storage facility…’

            ‘Right? I think we should check it out. I mean, the Glaives can use the Royal Arms, right? It could be useful for them.’

            It was clear Gladio could see the sense in this. He folded his arms ever tighter and nodded. Prompto waited; no definitive reply came. He drummed on his jeans pockets. Got bored of waiting. It had only been mere seconds but he needed the validation for the plan.

            ‘So we can check it out?’

            ‘Yeah, we’ll do it. Lemme make a note for Lars, hang on.’

            And Gladio delved back into the building, resurfacing after precious few minutes.

            ‘Well, now that’s all done…’ Gladio stretched, and sighed deeply. ‘Got time for a pint?’

 

Just a quick drink turned into a few. A few turned into a trip to the club.

            Prompto had never figured Gladio would be once for dancing. And — well, you could hardly call it dancing, the way he was moving. More of a gyration. And so close, up against Prompto like a thirsty dog to water. Lights down low, hiding the more handsy movements as the beat pumped up. Prompto had heard the songs a thousand times before, but at this point they were like the hymns to the Gods that were still quietly spoken before festivals and meals about the town — familiar, learned by rote, and ultimately irrelevant. A means to an end.

            He was more amped-up than drunk, but that didn’t really matter when both led to the same place. In this case, the bedroom. Prompto’s apartment, because he wasn’t sure if Gladio had lube at his — last time he never had the chance to find out.

            Behind the privacy of closed doors, Gladio’s lust became boundless. And Prompto greedily sucked it up, pulling Gladio further and further into the apartment, because with the man’s wanton kisses, they were finding it hard to move past the hallway. To have that strong, finely-sculpted body dominating him, those deep, throaty growls filling his ears, so raw and wanton and unforgiving — it was everything he needed, and more.

             Near the bed now, Gladio had him cornered. He could feel the bedframe digging into the back of his knee. And how badly he wanted to stay under Gladio’s sway forever.

            There was just one thing.

            Prompto placed one hand firmly on Gladio’s chest, stopping his advance.

            ‘Hold up.’

            He actually enjoyed the brief thrill of power he got when Gladio’s expression faltered, probably fearing the worst.

_Enjoy that thrill while you can, because you’ll definitely kick yourself for it later, whether you like it or not._

            ‘I don’t wanna hear about how beautiful I am, or anything like that. Okay?’

            A nod from Gladio. ‘Just straight-up cold and hard.’

_I don’t know. I’m torn. Sometimes I want it to have some greater meaning to it, and other times I really don’t._

            Sometimes he struggled with the idea that people liked him. What was it about him that made people so invested in… Ugh, no. He couldn’t go down that road.

            So he nodded. Wound himself closer, stretching upward to get his lips to Gladio’s ear.

            ‘Yeah. Make me _scream.’_

            Gladio’s smile grew wry and wicked. He manhandled Prompto down onto the bed, held his wrists down, pushing into the bed harder. Mounted him, covered him in kisses, and through the onslaught Prompto felt an uncoiling in his belly, a deep ache he longed to let unfurl.

            ‘Hmph, I think he likes it…’

            And then in hurried, careless movements he was stripping off, Prompto rushing to do the same. He let Gladio cinch down his pants and enjoy a few moments of rubbing up against him, their erections fighting for space against their bellies. Then, he directed Gladio wordlessly to the bottle of lube by his bedside.

            Gladio kept his word — _straight-up cold and hard —_ turning him onto his front and forcing him onto all fours. Pulling his tight ass up into the air where he could assault it mercilessly. And _gods,_ the _angle…_ when Gladio finally braced and drove himself in, the force hit so deep through his body it felt like he had been impaled. It made him choke on his own breath, it made him grip the bedcovers hard, and, if he hadn’t been on his knees already he would have staggered to recover. He had been under few illusions about the girth of Gladio’s cock, but it was one thing to imagine it, and quite another to feel it pulsing inside him.

            Evidently, Gladio was enjoying himself; the driving force had caused Prompto’s asshole to tighten almost instantly around his dick, and now his usually-so-gruff mouth was making the sweetest moans of pleasure.

            Prompto keened against the mattress. ‘More…’

            Now when Gladio thrust deep, his nails dug in, scoring impressions across Prompto’s bare shoulders. He sucked in breath sharply at first, but soon the desire for pain overrode the shock and he twisted up into the touch instead of flinching away. This time Gladio scored down the length of his back.

            And then, to his surprise, Gladio bit him. It was playful at first, and perhaps he had not been expecting such an enthusiastic response as the one Prompto gave. So he bit him harder, sinking his teeth into the fleshy knoll between neck and collarbone. While he clamped his teeth down, a free hand reached around for Prompto’s cock, jerking him off while he fucked him senseless. He refused to let go his hold on Prompto’s neck until Prompto came, messy and breathless on the sheets. Gladio grunted in deep satisfaction, leaving Prompto a sloppy, ruined mess with no strength to even hold himself up while Gladio finished up inside him. This part was the least bearable for Prompto, being so spent and oversensitive already, and every subsequent thrust only made his prostate shudder, sending waves of raw electricity through his body. He was completely at Gladio’s mercy, and he fucking loved every second of it.

 

So Gladio caught on quick. They met up again and again, each time increasing the intensity, upping the quality of the pain Prompto received.

            Not too different from their training sessions, in that sense. And, for a while, it worked. Time ticked on, minute by precious, god-sent minute, and the generator stayed untouched, and when Prompto’s skin was marred, it was only at his request, and by Gladio’s hands.

 

It was weird, talking to Iris for the first time in forever, after doing what he had done with her brother. Almost two weeks had passed since the first hook-up, and things had been going — dare he say it? — well. He must have not given anything away from the look on his face, because Iris greeted him like normal, launching straight into an animated diatribe on how excited she was about _stuff_ and how they hadn’t caught up in _so long_ and did he have time to go to the market with her?

            He did.

            It was easy to be relaxed around Iris. Her company lent an infectious sense of goodwill to anyone who was around, in the kind of way that seemed effortless, genuine. He doubted he could ever get away with that calibre of cheer — it seemed somehow infinitely more stupid when he did it.

            But her presence was charming, and his mood, which had been dismal thanks to a severe lack of sleep and a rough day at work, lifted considerably as they wandered through the market, languid as dragonflies.

            It was when they stopped at the food stalls that the subject of Gladio finally came up. Iris was making good work of her Mother and Child rice bowl — a dish the pair of them had gotten, in no small part because it reminded them of Noctis, and it was easier to feel close to him by eating his favourite food and smiling and laughing, than by moping and feeling sorry for themselves. Or, at least, he assumed Iris shared his opinion about it. The topic of Noctis always remained unspoken between them.

            ‘Oh my _gosh_ , this food is so _good!’_

‘Right?’ Prompto dosed his rice bowl with an extra helping of paprika. ‘Life would be a boring thing without this stuff.’

            ‘You need to get my brother eating more than just those stupid noodles,’ Iris said. The sigh that followed was so beleaguered, Prompto could imagine her as a forty-year-old woman, tired and running after wayward toddlers. ‘He _thinks_ he’s all grown up, but really… he needs such a helping hand sometimes. And he _never_ listens to me.’

            Prompto couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I’ll try. Can’t promise anything, though.’

            A nod from Iris. ‘Yeah — well, it _is_ Gladdy.’

            Prompto thought about it, and realised that actually, the last time he had sex with Gladio, they had finished at something like two in the morning, and Gladio had indeed padded into the kitchen afterward for a late-night Cup Noodle snack. How awkward it would be, the next time round, to interrupt him in his post-coitus ritual by bringing up his sister. _Oh hey, I know we just fucked but, by the way, Iris wants you to eat less junk food. Hope I didn’t make things weird._

An embarrassed smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he held it down by shoving another load of rice into his face. _Chew, just chew._

‘Hey, long time no speak.’

            A voice as well-rounded as the figure that approached them sounded out across the square. Prompto didn’t have time to finish his mouthful and greet the newcomer; Iris got there first with a cry and a vigorous wave.

            ‘Vyv? Oh, hey!’

            ‘Hey, kiddo. How’s it going? You scouting out a location right now or something?’

            ‘Vyv helped me get the market permit,’ Iris supplemented. Then, to Vyv, ‘Oh, not yet. I registered the intent with Lena but I don’t need to decide right away. I still have inventory to work out.’

            ‘Mm, solid, solid.’ Vyv nodded sagely, and pushed back his long, thick ponytail to give his podgy neck some fresh air. Then he turned to Prompto. ‘So how’re you doing these days? Haven’t seen you about in a while. Mind you, I’ve been busy as hell running the paper…’

            Prompto smiled. ‘I’m all right. Just… working in the power plant. Same old.’ Then he spied this look in Vyv’s eye. One he recognised, from years ago. Their first visit to Lestallum, on a hot and sultry afternoon, and the quest that led to photos of the Disc of Cauthess, before Ardyn, before Titan, before the whole mess that followed. ‘Um… why do I get the feeling you’re about to ask me a favour?’

            ‘Well, see, kid, I was wondering…’ Vyv fanned himself with the dogged end of an old leaflet, a fruitless attempt to bat away the musty Lestallum air. ‘That little trip you’ve got the hunters on about, it’s been the talk of the town. Well, okay, not the _whole_ town,’ he amended, catching Prompto’s reddening cheeks, ‘but you know what? I’d love a few shots of the expedition. For the magazine.’

            ‘Oh! Um…’ This was actually a fantastic opportunity, but it caught him off-guard enough to fumble his response. ‘Sure, I mean… Yeah. Yeah, definitely.’

            ‘I still can’t believe you’re looking for another king’s tomb! Man, the Glaives are gonna be so happy if you find it.’ Iris scraped the last remnants of rice from her bowl. They had been talking about the trip earlier, because of course, she had heard about it from her brother already.

            ‘Yeah. Gonna be a dangerous trip, though. The daemons up at the pass are getting bolder all the time.’

            ‘Oh, yeah. I heard about that,’ said Vyv. ‘Well, don’t put yourself in any undue risk, y’hear?’

            Prompto laughed, suddenly feeling cheerier than ever, and he playfully knocked Vyv’s arm. ‘Aw, Vyv, I didn’t think you cared!’

            Clear enough that the rueful look on Vyv’s face was all play, too. ‘You wound me, kid! You wound me!’

            Iris now had other things on her mind than playful banter. ‘So, Prompto. Why are there so many daemons around Pallareth?’

            ‘Probably something to do with the Oracle King.’

            ‘You think so? Hmm. I would have thought that’d mean _less_ daemons, not more.’

            ‘Nah — think about it. When Luna healed the infected, she absorbed the Scourge from them, right? It makes sense that an Oracle might wind up a hub for that sorta thing.’

            ‘Hmm… You’ve got a point, kid.’ Vyv’s beetle-black eyes were watching him with something between admiration and interest, and Prompto wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut, lest his words appear in some edited form in the next edition of Meteor Magazine.

            So he added, ‘Also it depends on _who_ the Oracle King is. Was. I mean… yeah.’

            ‘You’re being very cryptic.’ There was no malice in Iris’s words, just that same teasing sort of joy she brought to every conversation. Prompto quelled his anxiety; there was really no reason to be feeling it around her. ‘So, what’re you going to do if it’s not the Oracle King in there?’

            Prompto shrugged. ‘We keep looking.’

            He had not considered the possibility that the tomb might not be there at all. Even Randolph’s tip might have been a fabrication; nothing more than hearsay. But the instant he had heard it, he had this intense nagging sensation that it simply _was_ true, that it was there and he was destined to find it. He could feel the presence of the nøkk, leading him through the vegetation to the towers in the northeast, he could feel the convergence of that arcane energy there, as vividly as if he was watching a crowd thronging to the marketplace. At this point, the upcoming expedition was so much more than just a handy way to get the others used to the idea of him travelling outside the city. It seemed serendipitous, as if whatever lay down there might provide some extra clue as to how he planned to deal with Ardyn.

            If such a clue existed, it was as good as his already.

            Vyv patted him on the back, and thanked him in advance for the help. Iris grinned, clearly awed by Prompto’s determination, and she started to outline to him the ideas she had for her knick-knack store’s grand revival. And Prompto, he listened and smiled and chatted a while longer, while inside he felt satisfied, and somehow more in control, watching the threads all come together so neatly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: I hope you all like guns.


	7. Safe In Mind (Please Get This Gun From Out My Face)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Re-enactment comes at a price.  
> Only a small amount of time before the expedition to the tomb begins, and Prompto can't help but scratch an old itch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhh, did someone say GUN KINK?

 

‘You used to have piss-poor gun hygiene.’

            The comment came after a long training session, in the quiet lull back at Gladio’s apartment, where the pair had stopped to fix up their weaponry. Gladio wasn’t meaning to insult, but Prompto’s first reaction was prickly just the same.

            He stilled himself. Breathed in, out, before responding.

            ‘Hah, yeah.’ The cotton bud he had been using found its resting place on the sideboard. Set against wood grain long polished by use, the chamber of his revolver glinted clean. ‘Back then, I had like, barely any idea what I was doing.’

            ‘I just can’t believe you never shot your own foot by mistake.’

            He was right there. Rule number one: never let any part of a human being cross your line of sight with a loaded gun, unless you’re intending to shoot. The gods only knew how many times, during the trip with Noctis, he’d passed the barrel over his own leg, thinking he was innocently, and safely, pointing it at the ground. How many times he had waved the gun around at the caravans, while chatting and idling, and — oh, man — even letting Noctis cross his line of sight while doing so.

            ‘Gods, I was such an idiot, huh?’

            _We wouldn’t want to slip._

And just like that, the wound stabbing in his chest, burning deep. His heart ached. His _jaw_ ached. His groin grew warm, and he was unsure whether that was from arousal or a need to piss.

            Slow breaths, in and out. The clock still runs, time still flows, and all — _and all —_ is well.

            Gladio snorted a small laugh, then shook his shoulder gently, unaware that he was dragging him out of that dark spot.

            ‘But hey, you learned. An’ you’re a better marksman than any of us now.’

            _I learned._

            Prompto shook off the prickly feeling, and looked up at Gladio. Almost shy, feeling his eyes grow wide, his brow raise. Feeling the smile take over and watching Gladio return it. _All’s well._

            Back to business. The array of guns on the table before him was divided into two rows; the top featured his lighter revolvers, all .38 calibre and newly cleaned, while the bottom featured the heavier and more experimental models. Prompto thumbed the last one on that row idly. The coming week would see them embark on the mission to Pallareth Pass, chasing the trail of the Oracle King, and he had to be well-prepared.

            ‘So, should I bother bringing the .45?’

            ‘Hmm…’

            ‘Overkill, ya think?’

            ‘Maybe not. Bring it anyway. We don’t know what to expect down there.’

            ‘’Kay.’ He plucked it up off the table, wrist bending a little with the effort. ‘Baby, it’s been a long time since I gave you some attention.’ Rag back in opposite hand, he set to work, methodically rubbing and digging in and shining until all traces of grime were free.

            ‘Think I need to start replacing the grips on some of these things,’ Gladio murmured. He was inspecting his broadswords, testing their weight by idly shifting each one in turn between his hands. ‘Think maybe Cid could sort that out?’

            Prompto hummed his agreement. From out the window, half-cracked-open, the sound of the radio fizzed over the thick evening air. Someone, somewhere, was making lentil soup.

            Prompto finished up his work and leaned back in the noisy wooden chair. He was finding it hard to suppress his sighs.

            ’Some people still don’t want me to come, do they?’

            Gladio’s shoulders fell — a minute movement, but it was there. ‘No,’ he said.

            Prompto sniffed. ‘Yeah, I thought so.’ And, after a pause, he said, ‘I’m not just gonna tag along. Or mess things up.’

            ‘I know.’

            The one nice thing about Gladio being so direct was that there were no false platitudes with him. He never needed to worry about being lied to. Of course, that did not make hearing it any easier. The hunters were uncertain.

            But he could hardly blame them. Dissociating vividly, walking out of the city and — gods, he wished he hadn’t done this — _shooting_ at someone. It didn’t matter that he had never been aiming to hit them; it never should have happened inside the city. And so, it felt as though his unreliability was putting Lestallum to the test. The hunters had every right to side-eye this ‘remarkable turnaround’, as Ignis put it.

            He could have just passed on the information and let Gladio’s squad sort it.

            _As if._

‘I’ll prove myself to them,’ he murmured, but the fire in his words was for someone else entirely. Gladio, not noticing, merely nodded. They locked eyes for a second, and there was nothing but comfort and support there. It was enough to make Prompto feel guilty, so he got up, and busied himself by cleaning the kitchen. Throwing out used packets of Cup Noodles and mulling over the problem of trying to fit in with others — both were fine enough distractions.

           

The prickling returned, later, when what passed for night had drawn in and the neighbourhood had fallen as quiet as it was going to get. Prompto was staying with Gladio that night. He had not packed away his guns.

            They were getting worked up again, and gods, how easy it was, with both of them thirsty as hell for the other. Gladio had started it, making a pass at his butt while he stood brushing his teeth in the tiny bathroom. What was initially just a small grab turned to a longer, more thorough squeeze, and then Prompto was moaning through layers of toothpaste, spitting out, licking his lips, then yearning round to kiss Gladio passionately.

            They moved to the bedroom, Gladio slapping his ass to move him along, but before he could reach the bed he was pulled back by those firm hands and subjected to their touch. His eyes fluttered closed.

            For a moment it was bliss, Gladio’s fingers tracing around his shoulders. But they moved down to his wrists, all too delicately, and then came the burning. The itch, beneath the skin, always returning to that damned place.

            When Prompto flinched, feeling the darkness cluster in, Gladio noticed and subtly switched track, back up to his shoulders, his collarbone, his chest.

            But the sensation followed him there, too. Right above the heart, where eager fingers kneaded. He felt each press, not too hard but hard enough, each stroke of the finger. _One, two, three, four, get your wish._

            He bit his lip. Forced the feeling into submission. And then forced himself into submission too, exposing his neck for Gladio to focus on, making him grab, hold him to the wall. Gladio, rubbing up against him, the friction bringing them both to attention.

            And Gladio’s face — that fine cut of jaw, that strong brow, those benevolent and searching eyes ( _fuck_ , how yellow, in this low light) — almost brought tears to his eyes with how attractive it was, no less because of the care that lay within it.

_I like you, Gladio. I like you a lot. But if you catch me in a dark mood, I might want you to do all sorts of things to me, and I’m scared that you’ll think less of me, if that happens._

            Now was one such time.

            ‘Gladio…’

            ‘Yeah?’

            ‘Can you… Can you…’

            No, he couldn’t say it. No fucking way.

            No matter how much he wanted to.

            Eyes closed, he flinched when he felt a rough hand stroke his cheek. Gladio, coming in close and tender, checking he was okay. He nodded.

            ‘Ask me,’ Gladio said, and Prompto was so fucking aware of how thin, how thin the ice he stood upon. Why had he started that sentence? He wanted to bail, because if he didn’t, he might just die of shame. But Gladio knew there was something that needed said, and being the bullish type he was, he couldn’t let it go. So here he stood, teasing it out of him like he teased out moans from his body under that firm, commanding — _oh so_ commanding — touch.

            _If anyone could do this for me, it’s you._

            His voice was small when he finally spoke, as though the mere utterance of his words would make them shatter.

            ‘Can you … get my gun?’

            ‘Your gun?’ Prompto still had his eyes closed, but the upward lilt of Gladio’s voice said enough for him to know. He’d open his eyes and Gladio would be giving him that quizzical look, the one that made him look like a lost cocker spaniel, and then he’d have to _explain_ and he just couldn’t do that.

            Gods, this was embarrassing.

            He opened his eyes, and yeah, he’d been spot on about the expression.

            ‘For … y’know…’ He tugged at his wrists, wriggled just a little, then abruptly cast his eyes down because it was too much to look at Gladio. And he said no more, just letting the implication settle.

            _Oh,_ Gladio mouthed, without making a sound. There it was, the understanding dawning on his face, the disbelief, and fuck, was this how _he_ must have looked to Ardyn?

            No, and for one simple reason: Gladio wasn’t scared.

            But now Gladio was searching for more words, and it made Prompto’s stomach churn.

            _Oh, gods, here we go…_

‘Yeah. I gotcha.’ A more determined undercurrent to his words, now.

            Prompto raised his eyebrows. _Wait, really?_

 _‘_ You… I mean, you don’t, uh—’

            A finger met his lips. ‘I said I heard you, loud and clear. Now,’ — Gladio’s fingernails dug in to his wrists, tight enough to make him yelp — ‘I want you to stay right where you are.’

            He let his mouth fall open a little, and he nodded, because he wanted to do this so badly and he _had_ to have someone force him, he _had_ to have it so that there was no other option. He needed to experience the loss of control.

            And Gladio seemed to gather all that from his expression. His body language. He smirked, and released hold of Prompto’s wrists, slapping his cheek and leaving him with a quick, deep kiss before turning to the worktable at the far side of the room. There, the mechanical array gleamed in the hushed light, silvery stars in a dark sky. Gladio paced before them, a deliberate slowness to his steps. A glance, from eyes that seemed to pin Prompto to the wall in their intensity.

‘Which one?’

            ‘Uh.’ Prompto’s thoughts flickered to the .45, the gun he called _Death Penalty_ , and on his tongue he tasted salt and copper.

Dare he go so far as to choose that one?

            _Ugh, stop deliberating. Just do it._

He said its name in a small voice, and Gladio’s fingers hovered over the gun, carefully, as if it was some venomous creature that would hurt him if he picked it up incorrectly. Then he went for it, fingers stroking over metal, and Prompto was enraptured watching it glint in the golden light of the bedside lamp.

As Gladio handled it, for one small second it seemed like the perfect convergence of man and machine, turning the world infinitely more dangerous until Gladio holding the gun became the point that eclipsed everything else. He was all that existed.

            ‘Is it loaded?’

            ‘Uh. Just dummy rounds, but… yeah.’ Prepped for the next training session already. Otherwise, he never would have loaded a gun pre-emptively. Bad habits. _Very_ bad habits. It put Gladio’s earlier comments on gun hygiene to shame.

            Gladio looked at him, then looked back to the gun. He reached for the chamber quickly, as if it was alive, as if he was catching it off-guard. Only breaking eye contact with Prompto for as many seconds as it took to unload every round of ammunition from the chamber, he put Prompto in mind of a hunter, stalking his prey like it would disappear if he took his eyes off it for too long.

            And _he_ was the prey.

            _He was the prey._

Pulsing in his groin, at the very thought of that, at the words made real in his mind. So warm, so delicious, and for a moment it was as though the heat of his blood could be felt in every vein and capillary in his body.

            Dancing on the edge of his thoughts, right in the corner like it thought nobody was watching, there was a hole in his chest, blood-soaked and ragged-edged. It beckoned the heat in, begged for a quick-fire Round Two, something sharp and shattering to reveal that gorgeous bone-white lying deep inside.

            Enough. Ignore. Don’t feed it.

_It’s begging for it though, and so are you._

A soft keening noise escaped Prompto’s lips, and it bordered on the pathetic. Gladio finished sorting the chamber, snapped it back into place and whipped the barrel up to eye level. Here was the moment Gladio switched over fully into dominant-mode, placing one large hand over Prompto’s throat and holding him there, against the wall, the gun pointed directly at his head.

            ‘Tell me. Straight answer, yes or no. You like this shit?’

            He was being careful not to press the gun into Prompto’s skin, holding it far away enough from his temple, and Prompto supposed that this was meant to be a precautionary measure, in case he _really_ didn’t like it. This was a small moment in which Gladio seemed to be more worried about pushing him over the edge on accident than he was, and he appreciated his concern.

            He was also careful enough not to press his throat too tight, giving plenty of slack for Prompto to utter a small, embarrassed _Yes_ , which must have been so dissonant with his expression. He knew his eyes were wide and terrified; he could feel the pull on his muscles.

            ‘You know what to do if you don’t like it any more,’ Gladio murmured, his voice husky and commanding.

            Prompto agreed, all too readily. ‘Yeah. I’ll let you know.’

            He was determined not to use the safeword unless the situation _really_ called for it. Could that be classed as self-harm? Maybe. But in his mind, at that moment, it didn’t even matter. He knew Gladio wasn’t going to seriously injure him.

            He would be fine.

            Gladio smiled wickedly. Barrel of the gun finding the crook of Prompto’s jaw, making his pulse quicken. A still moment, an intake of breath. A shot of heat to Prompto’s groin.

            ‘On the bed. Now.’

            Prompto obeyed without a word. The sounds of his breaths and Gladio’s were the only accompaniment as he knelt on the mattress. He was _good,_ he was so very good, he was _obedient_ as possible, so that there would never be a reason to hurt him, even though he was going to get hurt anyway _._

He shivered. Anticipating. All but cold-sweating, because fuck, he needed this, and yet how it terrified him. For a minor instant he wondered if this point, that gun aimed his way with that firm expression lying behind it, would be the point where the nøkk returned to clamber up his body and hold him down. Maybe it would help Gladio along. Maybe it would take over, and… would that count as a threesome?

            Gods. _Stop thinking, just obey. Before he pulls the goddamn trigger._

            Then Gladio was straddling him, thighs clamping down around his midriff, pinning him to the soft mattress without hope of escape. The gun found a sweet spot in the knoll of his breastbone.

            ‘Arms above your head — spread ‘em up for me,’ Gladio commanded. It almost sounded like he wasn’t playing, and the implications of that idea went straight to Prompto’s cock. Which Gladio ground against, vigorously.

            _Fuck…_ they had barely even started yet and he was ready to explode.

            Gladio unbuckled his own belt and then Prompto’s, hitching his pants down with one hand until they were loose around his knees. He never bothered to remove them further than that, more concerned with keeping the barrel trained on Prompto’s chest.

            And there it was, the messy, haphazard state of undress, that put Prompto in mind of the car and the woods and everything that followed. The air, thick with humus and sweat, and the unmistakeable scent of worked leather. Gladio hoisted his legs with a fierce grunt and moved the gun up harshly to — Prompto yelped — the underside of his chin, until he could feel the barrel pressing upon his tongue from beneath. The only thing separating the metal from his mouth was that soft layer of tissue. Gladio could pull the trigger and, ignore the fact the gun was empty, he could open a new hole through to that precious space, fill him up, splay his brains out on the cell floor for Noctis to find.

            Wait.

            Something sharp and citruslike pricking at the corners of his eyes. He held it back. Turned his expression to pleading, exposed his ass all the more for Gladio to take. Kept his hands where Gladio had told him.

            Gladio was no fool. He was becoming accustomed to Prompto’s emotional fluctuations, and so, while his cock pulsed against Prompto’s asshole, he leaned in to touch their lips together instead of immediately reaching for lube. Only the slightest break in the façade, an _I love you, baby_ , and a brief stroke of that long lock of hair that hung to the right side of Prompto’s face.

            Then back to the grind. Now the lube came out, and he prepped Prompto amid his moans and frightened noises — half made in pretence but half not — finger driving into his ass and working him open, spreading slickness in the inches around the opening, glossing lightly over his perineum, his balls, and then the tantalising almost-stroke of his cock, before he decided yes, that was enough.

            Then — in a wicked flash of inspiration — he retracted the gun and moved it down and out of sight. Prompto’s eyes grew wide and a gasp escaped him when he felt cold metal against his asshole. Just a tease, it didn’t quite go in, but it was enough to skyrocket Prompto’s pulse. Warmth flooded his skin all over, and his erection throbbed. Gladio simulated the act of fucking him with it, moving it back and forth crudely, by no more than a few centimetres, and again came the prickling at Prompto’s eyes. Just as he began to hyperventilate, Gladio stopped, and returned the gun to the base of his jaw.

            He almost felt cheated — he hadn’t quite gotten over that edge where he would experience a _total_ loss of control. He let his breaths trip over each other until they righted themselves, feeling Gladio grapple for a decent entry position, and he wriggled in frustration. A flash of anger in his eyes. _Do your worst,_ he mouthed, the barest of noises escaping his throat.

            Hard metal pressing further up into his jawbone. Biting at flesh. ‘You’d better not be fucking with me.’

            Then Gladio entered, and the forward thrust jerked tears from Prompto’s eyes. Finally, that was his tipping point; he let his sobs flow freely, crying out as Gladio rocked into him, taking and taking, testing the limits of his body and will.

            Gladio didn’t think to push the gun into his mouth, and Prompto wasn’t about to push his luck by asking. This would do him just fine.

            Maybe too fine. His dick had barely been touched and yet he could feel himself approaching orgasm, a combination of the relentless pounding of his prostate and the intensity of the situation. His moans became breathless, his hips jerking independently of Gladio’s thrusting. He was so goddamn close. And yeah, of course, Gladio noticed. His free hand wrung itself around Prompto’s neck, while the gun found a new resting spot at his temple. The grin that painted Gladio’s face when he watched Prompto’s eyes pull wider was, again, wicked.

            ‘You come when I say you come, or I pull the trigger right here and now. It won’t matter to me, I’ll just — keep — going.’

            Damn, that was dark. Hot damn.

            Gladio could act pretty damn well.

            He nodded his head as vigorously as the gun’s pressure would allow, and a rough and high-pitched vocalisation stood in place of a _yes._

            _Let him hurt you. Let him just —_

_— Oh god —_

_— hurt you._

_Is this what you wanted?_

_Why isn’t it stopping?_

            Good — yes, this means he had reached the real turning point. _Just hold out a little longer._

His cock twitched and he imagined himself being torn in half.

            ‘Fuck — I’m gonna come.’ Gladio drove in faster and deeper and his touch was cruel with the edge of orgasm. His final harried thrusts drove Prompto over the edge too and then it was too final, he was tipping, he was bursting into bloom, a firework, all gunpowder being destroyed. He was beautiful, until he realised he was nothing at all.

 

It took Prompto a long time to come out of subspace. Not that it was ever a quick cut and dry process, but this particular session felt like it had been a thousand orders more violent than before.

            ‘Too much?’ Gladio asked. He had brought him some tea. Ginger. Prompto could tell by the smell.

            ‘No.’ Prompto raised exhausted eyes to look at him. ‘’S’what I wanted. It was good. Real good.’ He murmured that again to himself as he reached for the tea. He drank, for a while, slow sip by slow sip, and Gladio sat with him, doing and saying nothing but to allow him the space to recover.

            Really, they both needed it. He knew, even in his own detached way, that it could not have been easy for Gladio to enter that space, become that persona for him.

            He twined his fingers in Gladio’s. Other hand still gripping the now-tepid tea, still working on it. Gladio grunted, deep and satisfied. When the cup was drained, Gladio untangled himself and took it gently from Prompto’s hands, placing it on the coffee table where neither of their splayed-out-legs could knock it. Then his hands found Prompto’s cheek and stroked, thumbing over the place on his neck where he had pressed the gun’s barrel, as if to soften the small circular impressions it had left behind.

            ‘Now, I want you to do one last thing for me, _pet.’_

            Prompto caught his breath in pleasure at the moniker. He remained silent, looked up, eyes searching Gladio’s, awaiting the command.

            ‘You,’ Gladio said, fussing his hair before grasping it hard, ‘are going to clean up, and cut yourself some slack for the rest of the night. No excuses. Got it?’

            _Oh, very clever, using your dom powers on me for my own good,_ Prompto thought.

            ‘I said, “Got it?”’ Gladio reasserted his grasp on Prompto’s hair, and Prompto yelped even as he broke into a smile.

            ‘I … y-yeah. Yes.’

            Gladio smirked, and let go his hair. Prompto did exactly as he was told, showering off and cleaning up and then treating himself kindly; tea and snacks and a return to the sofa where he eventually fell into comfortable slumber in Gladio’s arms.

In the quiet aftermath, the phone rang.

            It had Prompto up like a shot, disentangling himself from Gladio’s bear-hug of an embrace on the sofa like he ought to start running for cover.

            When he realised what it was, he was overcome by the urge to avoid it — just let it ring on, until it stopped interrupting him. No desire to speak to anyone.

            Gladio rose sluggishly, grumbling when he realised Prompto wasn’t making any move for the phone, grumbling more when he tripped over the tail end of a cushion strewn on the floor.

            ‘Yeah?’ Prompto caught a frown there, and he guessed it wasn’t a personal call. ‘Yeah, sure. Got it. I’ll be there in a few.’ With a reluctant stretch, Gladio finished up the call, and returned to the sofa, not sitting but pacing, arms folded, looking thoroughly disappointed at how comfy the sofa was in comparison to what he no doubt had to head out into.

            It was hard for Prompto not to read that look as some form of dissatisfaction in _him —_ especially after the rude awakening, mounting countless jolts of adrenaline in his system — but somehow, he managed it.

            ‘What was that all about?’

            ‘Trouble at the gates,’ he said. ‘Some idiot broke the drawbridge fixing.’

            ‘Um. Anything I can help with?’

            ‘Nah. Get some more rest.’ A peck on the cheek, another grab of his ass, then Gladio hauled his clothes on and disappeared into the night.

With Gladio gone, Ardyn’s shadow remained. The invisible bands on Prompto’s chest felt too tight, compressing his ribs while the guilt inside — at what he had done, at how he had _dared_ simulate it — burned away ferociously. Maybe it had been too much, after all. Maybe it had been, and he hated that notion. Where was the control he was striving for?

            Back to the quiet hours. Depressing domestic space opening out before him like a channel to somewhere more dangerous by far. And here he was, holding vigil again. Counting down time before the trip into the darkness began. All the little tokens of a normal life around him — coffee machine, radio set, shopping lists and half-empty mugs — seemed unreal.

            The coat rack by the door: too spindly all a sudden. Metal frames. Spider arms. Tight.

            _I know, I know, it hurts, doesn’t it? My poor —_

_— beauty —_

Fuck.

            He directed his mind somewhere up and to the left, as if that was a way to avoid hearing Ardyn’s voice.

            _It’s so dumb. He’s not even here. You’re freaking insane._

He thumbed his own wrists, softly at first, then harder, scoring across the skin with his nail. Digging, as if he would turn over some hidden prize. He thought about everything they had done earlier.

_It’s not enough._

_Oh, shit, it’s not enough._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UP - The expedition begins. Let's hope everyone's prepared.


End file.
